At the Midway (47 page)

Hart had become fascinated with balloons after seeing them tested at Fort Myers.  It was there that he learned the basics of construction.  When he boarded the company ship bound for Midway, he brought with him five thousand yards of cheap muslin, three large wood retorts, a twenty-gallon copper kettle, eighty gallons of pure linseed oil, some heavy wicker, and the sundry odds and ends that would be needed to make the finishing touches on the balloon.  The entire homemade kit put him out three hundred dollars.  Which meant he arrived on the island broke--but rich in time.

And patience.  An absolute necessity for what he had in mind.  First, the muslin had to be varnished with the rubbery residue of heated linseed oil--three applications, all of which had to be brushed on thoroughly and evenly to avoid future leakage.

Then the cloth had to be cut into gores.  The pattern of the gores formed a sine, so that, when sewn together, the balloon shape formed naturally.

All stitching was double, with particular care not to pucker the seams.  Then the seams and stitches were varnished.

Next came the most tedious chore: making the net.  A fair amount of computation was involved to make certain the net was the proper size.  Made of cotton and seine twine, which was soft and elastic, Hart had to begin at the bottom of the equator and work outward, the mesh becoming smaller at the mouth.

After this, the clapper valve was easy.  All Hart needed was a couple of barrel heads, planed and sanded.  He cut out their centers, fixed brass hinges on the clappers, lined the inside of each with leather, and attached them to the envelope.

Five months earlier, the entire command turned out for the maiden voyage.  Coal gas was allowed to cool some in the retorts, then piped through the feed valve.  It was one of the rare occasions when Hart did not mind the presence of his fellow Americans.  In fact, after closing off the valve, he gave a brief thank
-
you speech and doffed his cap before releasing the first anchor line.

One thing he did not dare, and that was to cut loose entirely from the ground.  The winds of Midway tended to come up sharply
-
-
one had only to watch the birds to see it.  Once caught in an air current, that would be all she wrote for one Hamilton Hart, lost at sea while acting the fool in the air.  Thus, two lines hung down from the car.  The first was used once he'd reached the desired height.  It dangled just above the island.  When it touched the ground it took the weight off the balloon, preventing it from descending before the aeronaut wanted to.  The other line was secured to a winch, giving him several hundred feet of play, but keeping him safely above the atoll.  Hart might dream of the horizon, but he had no intention of going there.

How tiny Midway seemed from on high!  Tinier still, the men.  What did God see when he looked down?  Men on foot, or inconspicuous specks?

Gooneys flew close to inspect this new bird, their wings shuddering ever so slightly as they paused in mid
-
air.  While watching Hart fight off a wave of nausea, they seemed to say: 
There.  You mock us on land.  But up here, who's the fool
?  And then they arced away with indescribable grace and ease.

Over the period of a month Hart ascended four times. The car was big enough only for one man, but he politely offered others the opportunity to go aloft.  A few of them voiced interest, including Lieutenant Anthony.  But on his fourth trip an incautious frigate bird zipped into the balloon and got tangled in the netting.  In its frantic attempt to escape it tore a hole in the varnished muslin.  Hart was able to descend without mishap, but the incident put everyone else off.

Which meant no one else had the slightest idea how to operate the balloon.  He had to train someone quickly.

Later in the day, Hart rose from the half-completed wireless set and checked on the men repairing the balloon's envelope, which had been damaged by high winds last time up.  The Japanese, dressed only in their loincloths, their skin gleaming with sweat, looked like exotic human mushrooms in the late afternoon glow.

"Mr. Hot," said Ace, "we about finished.  You work the telegraph tomorrow.  Who goin' to fly the balloon?"

Hart looked Ace up and down--not a long process.  "Best to have someone on the small side.  The weight of the antenna and reflector will put a drag on her."

"You don't think it will...."  Ace shaped his hand into a dying bird and made a fluttering falling motion.

"I don't think so."

"I'm small."

"You're very brave.  It's what we call a captive balloon.  If anything goes wrong, we can haul you down quickly."

"Mr. Hot, if anything goes wrong, it will be down here."

Hart could not help but laugh.

1931 Hours

News of Depoy's disappearance brought morale to its lowest.  He could not have deserted. There was no place to run.  Somehow, the creatures had sneaked up on him in broad daylight and taken him off before he could fire a shot.  He'd probably fallen asleep at his post.  Yet the effective silence of the deed filled them with cold dread.

But the main bunker was finished.  There would have been room in it for thirty men, had there been thirty men left.  In their own grisly fashion, the creatures had solved the problem of space for them.

To Ziolkowski's thinking, the completed bunker did not absolve them from the need to put up a fight.  Cower?  U.S. Marines?  Only when there were no stones left to throw.  They had to prevent the creatures from rampaging willy
-
nilly over the island.  There were too many vulnerables.  The warehouse, with its supply of water casks and tinned food.  The distillery, which supplied them with fresh water.  Their sea tug, the
Iroquois
-
-
although stepped
-
up on the beach with broken pressure valves, she symbolized hope.  It seemed the only way to protect them all was to make sure the marines remained the center of attention.

The lookouts were dispatched before dark. The sergeant added unnecessary admonition: "Don't leave your holes.  I don't care if you've got the biggest load of shit since Creation hod up in you. Stay in, stay awake."

No one asked questions.

Lieber was roused from a sandy bed as the last light faded.  He would spend another night with kitchen utensils in his mouth.  He would not be relieved until sunrise.

"You've slept all day," Ziolkowski explained.  "That's more than anyone else has gotten.  I'm leaving one of the lamps with you.  Maybe that will help you all stay awake."

No one could wake up Hart.  No one knew if he'd fallen asleep or had passed out.  He lay at the far end of the bunker, in the middle of an unconscious huddle of Orientals.  Ace had fallen back in a
Pietà
-like pose, his mouth hanging open, a stupendous snore erupting at regular intervals.  Lieber experienced an irrational moment of jealousy.  He had begun to think of Ace as his personal manservant, though everything Ace did for him was strictly voluntary.  Now the civilian had come along and absconded with him.

Well... to hell with it.  The little Jap was a nuisance, all in all.  Always running up from behind, trying to rescue one thing or another.  He'd saved Lieutenant Anthony, only to have Anthony die moments later.  Maybe Ace was bad luck in disguise.

Staring at the battle lantern hour after hour, Lieber's eyes met on the flame; it seemed to waver and die.  Then someone kicked him and he realized he had nodded off.  This happened two more times.

"Why can't I keep my eyes open?" he berated himself.  "Think of what's at stake!"

He had begun to view the duel between men and monsters as a great
Entscheidungsschlacht
--a decisive battle between ultimate creatures.  The Cataclysm of the Ages was at hand.  If he didn't watch out, he would sleep right through it.

Early that morning he was alerted to a terrible sensation in his mouth.  He waved an arm.  Someone shook Ziolkowski awake.

"They're coming?"

Lieber shrugged.  There was no sense in what he was receiving.  No attempt at code.  What the hell was Kitrell up to?

What he was experiencing was a scream transferred directly to his tongue.  After it had passed, and the fork and spoon regained their former metallic blandness, Lieber sensed the truth:

He had tasted death.

June, 1908

30°45'N, 165°20'W

From the
Deck Log of the
USS Florida
:

Mast awarded Seaman McGhin 2/c 10 hours extra duty for unauthorized smoking; Mast gave Ship's cook 1/c 2 weeks restriction for drunkenness; Pvt Danty (Marine) 10 hours slow relief  for indifferent performance
;
at 0800 received dispatch from Opnav (1606 1015) advising no further information re Midway.

"Dr. Singleton!"

The doctor's world was limited to the confines of his sea cabin, but that world was revealing a remarkable elasticity and a marked capacity to roll from side to side.

"Dr. Singleton!  Get up!  The captain wants to see you."

The world thundered.  Fog collapsed.  Mountains floated.  Singleton did not want to open his eyes to such sights.  But the shaking persisted and the evidence indicated he would have to lift his heavy lids to make it stop.

Midshipman Davis was looking down at him.

"Leave me alone, boy."

"If necessary, I'm to have the Captain of the Marines send in two men to clean you up and bring you topside."

"That's... outrageous!"  Forcing himself up, Singleton shifted his legs over the edge of the cot.  A wave of nausea hit and he promptly threw up on the midshipman.

"It shouldn't present much of a problem, sir," said the exec.  "There's a coaling station at Midway."

"And if it's fallen into enemy hands, Mr. Grissom?"

"We'd be stranded."

"We'd be
sunk
."  Captain Oates glared into the cubicle that served as their wireless station.  The electrician who had passed on the bad news remained intent on the telegraph, as though waiting breathlessly for word from the Oracle of Delphi.  But there were no favorable prognostications.  He had finally received a clear, nearly static-free transmission, only to find that the news was bad.

The collier
Daisy
Mae
had just signaled Oates that she had developed engine trouble and was making for Honolulu.  There was little point in the
Florida
coming about to help, as she was now a hundred and fifty miles astern.  The skipper of the
Daisy
Mae
respectfully suggested the
Florida
make port, too.

In one respect, this was a relief.  They would not have to coal at sea again.

Four colliers had followed the battleship through the Golden Gate.  The
Florida
had recoaled three times since then.  It was a nerve-racking procedure.  After a collier was taken in tow, a conveyor rope was secured between its masthead and the stanchions above the
Florida's
aft turrets.  Then a ton of coal divided into eight-hundred-pound sacks was hoisted to the masthead and winched across the four-hundred-foot cableway until the carrier came above the coal hatches.  Unpracticed in the method, it had at first taken the crew as much as forty-five minutes to deliver the carrier.  Since the
Florida
burned six tons of coal every hour, this was not a pace that would have kept her going much longer.

Their timing improved, but other problems cropped up.  At one point the towline parted.  It had taken quick thinking to devise a "knock-down hook," with the
Florida's
sea anchor made fast to the superstructure.  Lieutenant Grissom, who oversaw the operation, then ordered the cableway lowered and the hook released.  One end of the conveyor rope ran off the winch, which was kept running so it could pick up the hook end.  Once accomplished, the collier picked up the anchor and the carrier, the
Florida
took in the conveyor, and the entire rig reset so the coaling could once more proceed.  Oates dwelled on the fact that if the hawser had snapped while the carrier was above the quarterdeck, everyone below would have been crushed.

They had enough fuel to reach the atoll without the
Daisy
Mae
.  But just barely.  There were two vital reasons why the battleship required full bunkers and stokeholds the moment Midway hove into view.  If a Japanese fleet was present, they would need plenty of fuel for maneuver--and escape.  And with the holds empty, the
Florida
rode high in the water, exposing her red armor belt.  A shot below the armor would send them to the bottom.

It was time to turn back, no question.  Even if the Midway alarm had nothing to do with the Japanese, there was no guarantee the bunkers on the island could supply them with enough coal to reach Hawaii.  If not, they would have to wait until another collier was dispatched.  Inevitably, they would miss the Fleet at Honolulu.  Another black mark for the
Florida
and finis for Captain Oates.  This was the navy that urged its men to fire its huge guns even if there was explosive powder loose in the chamber.  To risk all--and pay all--was the credo.  Oates really had no choice.