Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  A wet, disheveled Buck Williams was still gripping the bridge rail where he had been before the wave struck. The ship was heeled far over to port; Richardson, on the port side, had gone farther under than Williams. The bridge speaker was blaring something. It sounded choked and garbled, because water was still draining from its perforated bottom, but it was unmistakably Keith’s voice.

  “Bridge! We’re way off course! Are you all right?” With the ship already knocked off her ordered heading, if anyone had been swept overboard the thing to do was to continue the unexpected turn and go after him directly. Doubtless Keith would have someone on the other periscope helping him look for people in the water—yes, both ’scopes were up, describing great arcs across the cloudy sky as Eel rolled in the aftermath of the huge sea—but of course it was not possible to depress the periscope optics sufficiently to see what had happened on the bridge directly beneath them.

  Richardson made as if to reach for the speaker button. The quick-thinking Williams, nearer to it, pressed it for him. “Keith! This is Rich!”—unconsciously he also used his nickname—“We’re both okay up here. Carry on!”

  “Conn, aye! That comber rolled us over thirty degrees and took us forty-five degrees off course! We’re coming back to channel heading now!” Keith sounded relieved, despite the distortions of the speaker.

  Several hundred yards ahead, broad on the port bow, the entrance buoys danced as the breaker hit them. Strangely, they seemed no closer than they had been before the pooping sea, though they had then been dead ahead, with the submarine making quite respectable speed. As Rich watched, the two buoys steadily swam to the right, settled down a few degrees on the starboard bow. Keith was compensating for the distance Eel had been pushed off track, obviously planning to get the ship centered in the channel and on the right course before passing between the buoys.

  “That looks like the only wave, Skipper!” said Williams. “I sure wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!”

  “Me, too, Buck. That was the biggest comber I’ve ever seen, or heard about, either!” Richardson paused. “After we get secured let’s look up this Kona business. I’ve seen it before. But never this rough!”

  Both officers had been shaking their binoculars dry, now put them to their eyes and began looking steadily aft. “Well,” said Richardson, “that was it, I guess. Only one wave, but that one nearly creamed us.”

  “Open the hatch, Captain?”

  “Negative, not for a couple minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The conversation, clipped and monosyllabic, carried out with binoculars against their eyes, had shifted to officialese. A full thirty seconds of silence ensued, each man absorbed in his own search of the water and horizon astern.

  “Bridge! . . . Conn! We’re steady on base course, about to pass the entrance buoys!”

  Buck glanced at his skipper, caught his imperceptible nod, pressed the bridge speaker button. By mutual understanding of the watch officers, merely pressing the button—which allowed a certain amount of feedback to enter the ship’s speaker system for a moment—had become accepted for a routine acknowledgment, making unnecessary the additional distraction of words. In a silence that was almost eerie, for Eel was still on battery power and the customary mutter of the diesel engine exhausts was absent, the sub moved ahead. The two buoys, the red conical one to starboard and the black can-shaped one to port, swam alongside. Only a moment ago they had seemed quite close together, thought Richardson, and now they seemed far apart. He was totally oblivious to the fact that he had made this identical observation at least a dozen times before.

  “Skipper . . .” Buck again, in a conversational tone. “Why didn’t you clear the bridge entirely when we saw the wave coming? There was time for both of us to get below, I’m sure.” He still held the binoculars to his eyes while talking.

  Richardson put his own glasses down, let them hang on their strap around his neck. “There probably was enough time, Buck,” he said, “but of course I didn’t have any idea how big that wave would be. We were in a narrow channel. Entering port, the skipper is supposed to stay on the bridge. But why didn’t you obey me when I told you to go?” He was not being entirely frank; he’d been thinking that perhaps the wave had been meant for him, that it might bring peace for all time.

  And then he wished he had not asked his own question of Williams, for there was a hint of hesitation as that normally self-possessed young man answered, too smoothly, “I just figured that since I had the deck, I’d better stay up too.” Williams’ binoculars remained against his eyes as he spoke, and he was inspecting the shore to starboard.

  “Bridge! . . . Conn! Permission to open the main induction and answer bells on the engines!”

  Richardson was grateful for the distraction from a conversation which had taken an uncomfortable turn. “Conn! . . . Bridge!” He held down the speaker button, bellowed into it, supporting himself with the ruined Target Bearing Transmitter. “Open the induction! Answer bells on three engines! Open the bridge hatch! Lookouts to the bridge!”

  The clank of the induction valve, immediately below the after part of the bridge deck, was his answer, even before Keith made the customary acknowledgment. Then came the familiar clatter of the engines rolling on air, and the hearty power roar, accompanied by sprays of water from the mufflers, when the diesel fuel was cut in. The handwheel in the center of the hatch spun; it banged open: crash of heavy steel against lighter steel. Four lookouts, followed by Lasche and Oregon, dashed by him and to their stations. Last up was Keith.

  “I still have the conn, Captain,” he said. “Request permission to turn over to the regular OOD”—with a glance at the drenched suit of what had only a few minutes earlier been inspection khakis—“if he’s ready.”

  “It’s up to Buck,” began Richardson, but Williams beat him to it, spoke at the same instant. “I’m ready to relieve you,” he said to Keith.

  As the traditional ritual of turning over the duties of Officer of the Deck took place—truncated in this instance because of the short time Keith had held the conn—Richardson raised his binoculars and surveyed the channel. So far as he could see, Eel was the only ship in it. The entrance buoys were now astern. Ahead two more red and black buoys were in sight, similar to but smaller than the first pair. The visibility held a hint of haze, and he could barely make out the third pair. Eel was still proceeding through open water, but ahead the shoreline closed in except for a patch of water in the middle toward which she was steering. Unseen in the distance and the haze, the otherwise straight channel made a couple of small bends between banks of hibiscus-laden shore, and to starboard around one of them would be Hospital Point, with usually some convalescing patients and a few nurses watching the ships pass in and out. No doubt there would be a crowd of people today, curious to see what the Kona weather might do to the outlying reaches of the channel and to any ships caught in it. They would have noticed the absence of the usual sweepers and patrol craft, the lack of other ships going in or out (Keith had commented on this after things had returned to normal). From her appearance they would know Eel was returning from patrol, and they would guess the significance of the display of Japanese flags flying from the radar mast. They would probably wave a greeting as the ship rounded the point. Perhaps, with their own injuries, with Arizona’s flag still raised every morning over the 1100 men still aboard the silent, shattered hulk, they would be pleased if they could know that this particular submarine had deliberately run down three lifeboats filled with enemy sailors.

  Almost, for a blessed instant, there had again been a feeling of peace and normality, an ordinary gladness at the return from patrol at once safe and successful, relief from the latest emergency passed, anticipation of the good times in store for the next two weeks or so until the demands of getting ready for another patrol would take up all their time and energy. But, as usual, the mood could not last. Richardson would not go to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He could not join his officers and crew there.
He would remain aboard during the refit, perhaps ask for a room in the submarine base BOQ if things became too impossible on board. His lips unconsciously compressed into the hard line which had recently become so often his expression. He released the binoculars, allowing them to drop with unaccustomed disdain on their leather thong and strike his chest. Keith was beside him.

  “I’ve been relieved of the conn, sir. Buck has it again.” Then, in a less officious tone, looking squarely at him, Keith added “We hope you’ll be able to join us at the Royal tonight, Skipper. ComSubPac and Captain Blunt will probably want you for dinner, but will you promise to come on out after?”

  Instead of the petulant negative he intended to utter, Richardson found himself answering, “Well, there’ll be a lot to do here, but maybe . . .”

  Keith didn’t let him finish, maintained a note of heartiness which instantly betrayed itself as a substitute for anxiety. “Come on, Boss, you can’t let us down. Al Dugan and Buck and I have planned a big party to celebrate the boat’s first run. If you expect me to let anyone put any paperwork in front of you today, you’re crazy!”

  Probably the party had been less than a minute in the planning stage. It was even possible that Keith and some of the others had set up some sort of cabal to keep him from brooding over the lifeboats, to see to it that there was always one of them with him. Perhaps that was why Buck had refused to go below. Clever of them! Well, he would not be taken in.

  “You know I’ll probably not be able to make it, Keith—It’s almost routine for a returning skipper to have to go to dinner at the admiral’s house the first night.” This was a non sequitur. Keith had already mentioned that probability. But the admiral’s dinners rarely lasted late, and in any case the wardroom party would be held in one of the hotel rooms, where Rich too would be assigned.

  Keith was not giving up. “How about after, then?”

  Richardson hardened his voice. “No. It’s your party, not mine. I’d be a drag on you fellows. Besides, with the curfew, I’d have to break some of the rules to make it out there after dark. You can all get just as drunk without me, anyway.” He gave his voice all the finality he could muster, while pretending to grin.

  Keith recognized defeat in the covert contest. “Okay, Skipper. But you won’t get away from us tomorrow—by the way, shouldn’t we send down for some dry clothes for you and Buck?”

  A few minutes later, as Eel rounded Hospital Point, there was indeed a larger than usual group watching. Several pairs of binoculars were also in appearance, being handed from one patient to another by solicitous nurses who were not above looking through them themselves as they did so. Eel was the only ship they had seen pass their lookout point so far that morning, and they made all the right deductions, save one, having had much experience in the meanings of the signs they could identify. Several among them muttered comments that Kona weather must not be all they had been led to expect: this rust-streaked sub, obviously just back from a very successful war patrol, probably to Empire areas, showed no signs of having been in the least discomfited. The two or three waves they had seen from a distance did not seem big. They were inadequate reason for the lack of other ships in the normally busy channel. Probably the authorities had been overcautious.

  But no one was able to give a plausible reason why, as well as could be seen from a distance, there were two naked men among the group on the bridge, toweling themselves and then apparently hastily donning their clothes.

  -2-

  The reception at the dock in the submarine base was exactly as Richardson had imagined it would be, exactly as it had always been for a submarine returning from patrol. The number one docking space in front of the submarine base headquarters had been cleared for Eel. A trim and alert crew of enlisted line handlers stood prominently in the foreground, and a ten-piece band played popular music at the head of the pier. A crowd of khaki- and dungaree-clad submariners had gathered around the place where a long bridgelike wooden structure, the Admiral’s extra-wide ceremonial gangplank, or brow, its rails wrapped in shellacked white cord, was waiting to be put over to Eel’s deck when she came to rest. Conspicuous near the brow, standing in the foreground and a little apart from the others, Rich could see the stocky figures of Admiral Small and his chief of staff, Captain Joe Blunt. Near them a burnished five-gallon milk can stood out among mail sacks, crates of fruit and vegetables, and a large sealed cardboard box which could only contain the traditional ice cream. All these still rested in the small cart that had been wheeled down to the dock, where friendly hands would eagerly pass them across the submarine’s rail and onto Eel’s deck even while the arriving ceremonies were still in progress.

  But all did not seem quite the same as usual. At least, not to Richardson. Greater than ordinary warmth exuded from the crowd even before the docking maneuver had been completed. The smiles of welcome were broad, even broader than usual. Were they lacking a little in spontaneity? The wisecracks exchanged with Eel’s crew as her black-and-gray, rust-splotched length slowly eased up alongside the dock into her allotted mooring, on the other hand, seemed less ribald than his memory recalled, somehow more subdued. Everyone present must know how he had destroyed Bungo Pete. His radioed report of the action in which Eel had sunk a submarine, a Q-ship, and a destroyer, and then rammed and sank three lifeboats, had been classified Top Secret and was deliberately sparse of details. But the Pearl Harbor grapevine was renowned.

  The patrol report, laboriously composed and typed on mimeograph stencil sheets ready for reproduction, lay sealed in Quin’s tiny yeoman’s office near the wardroom. Contrary to usual practice, it had been typed in two parts. The second part, labeled “Top Secret Addendum to Report of First War Patrol of USS Eel,” contained all the details of the fight with Bungo. This, Richardson planned to hand to Admiral Small or Captain Blunt personally.

  Williams, as Officer of the Deck, was making the landing. Keith was on the bridge ready to lend a hand. Richardson could not divest himself of responsibility for the safe handling of the Eel, but he could clearly demonstrate his confidence in Buck Williams and Keith Leone by ostentatiously paying no attention as they maneuvered the ship alongside the dock.

  As Eel slowly traversed the last few feet to her appointed mooring space, Richardson quietly left the bridge, climbed down the steel rungs at the break in the cigarette deck rail, and made his way forward to the forecastle.

  Instinctively, because he knew exactly what they would be doing and what space they would require, he avoided the practiced maneuvers of the line-handling parties on the submarine deck. As Eel’s way gradually petered out through the last few feet of still oily Pearl Harbor water, he found himself exactly opposite the submarine force commander and his chief of staff.

  At about the right time—for it would not do to be premature with the ship not yet fully in, nor to be too late, Rich saluted, encompassing both Admiral Small and Blunt with the same salute.

  “Good morning, Admiral,” he said. “Morning, Commodore.”

  Neither Small nor Blunt was interested in the traditional formalities. Both returned his salute, Blunt rather condescendingly, Richardson felt. Both called across a welcome.

  The admiral’s words could not be faulted. “Rich,” he said loudly, obviously intending that everyone should hear, “that was a magnificent patrol! I’m delighted you had no trouble this morning coming in. Congratulations on a great run!”

  Captain Joe Blunt had been Richardson’s greatly admired skipper in Octopus, his first submarine, during the years before the war. He was short and spare, though lately the spareness was less evident and his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair had a lot more “salt” in it. So did the extraordinarily heavy eyebrows. Before the war, sub skippers were older. Blunt must now be in his fifties. His face had always appeared weathered and craggy to Rich, no doubt from the years he had spent on an open submarine bridge. He had been the epitome of the professional submarine officer, considerate and helpful to his subordinates, demanding of perform
ance, confident of himself and his ship. He knew more about Octopus, and could handle any part of her better, than anyone else aboard. Since the Octopus days, he had been squadron commander and training officer at New London for both Richardson’s previous commands, the old S-16 and the new Walrus. Now both Octopus and Walrus were gone, lost somewhere in the Pacific. It was natural that it should be Blunt’s greeting which Richardson would afterward recall most clearly. “Welcome back, Rich,” he said. “We weren’t expecting you until late this afternoon. Didn’t you receive our weather warning this morning? We told you to remain outside until this Kona weather passed!”

  Four heaving lines flew out to the pier, to be caught in midair by the line-handling parties at whom they were aimed. Swiftly Eel’s mooring lines were hauled in, the eye splices on their ends placed over the waiting cleats. The cheerful bustle of warping the submarine in the last few feet until she lay snug against the wooden pilings that formed the edge of the pier prevented further conversation. It was just as well. There could be no answer to Blunt, except the obvious one that a message not received was as if never sent. Somehow Richardson had the idea that Admiral Small had not wanted the matter brought up at all.

  In a few moments all was secure, the brow placed aboard, and the crowd of well-wishers, preceded by Small and Blunt, took over Eel’s deck.

  It was an honor, Richardson realized, for both the submarine force commander and his chief of staff to descend to Eel’s tiny wardroom and drink coffee at the table where he and his officers had held so many councils of war. Certainly they wanted to talk about the patrol just completed, but they must have known this could not be. There were too many others milling about during this first hour of return from patrol. There would be time for confidences later. The visit was a ceremony.

  In the far corner of the wardroom, ensconced on the settee which sometimes doubled as a bunk for the most junior of all the officers, Keith Leone was already deep in conversation with someone who could only have been the submarine base engineering and repair officer. They started to rise when the admiral and Captain Blunt entered, but there was obviously nowhere for them to go; Small, in a single motion, bade them retain their seats.