Voyage to Somewhere (26 page)

Still the wind increased. I looked at the chart and saw we were nowhere near land. By that time this was a comfort, for if we could not get into a harbor, I wanted to be as free of reefs and islands as possible. Gradually we started to fall behind the other ships. “Resume your position in convoy,” the commodore signaled, and with a perverse satisfaction I replied, “I am making my best speed.”

When the morning of the fifth day dawned, the convoy was so far ahead of us that we could barely see them. On the horizon a huge signal light blinked us. Our light was too small to reply at that distance, but the big light signaled, “If you cannot maintain convoy speed, proceed independently to destination along stragglers' route.”

I went into the chart room and from the orders plotted he stragglers' route to Okinawa. We altered course and plunged along by ourselves. I picked up the binoculars and stared after the other ships. Gradually they disappeared over the horizon. In spite of the fear of collision I had had in convoy, I felt a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach when I saw them go. Now we had no destroyers to protect us. That fact did not disturb me so much as the reasonless sense of loss I felt at being alone. I called up the engine room.

“Better knock her down to fifty turns,” I said to Mr. Rudd. “We're alone now. We're taking the stragglers' route.”

“Good riddance!” said Mr. Rudd. “Now we won't have to beat ourselves to death trying to keep up with them.”

When the engines were slowed the motion of the ship became a little less desperate, but the increasing wind quickly made up for the decrease in speed. Gradually the sound of the wind permeated the whole vessel; even in the engine room the men could hear it. At first the wind only hummed; then it whistled on one long, sustained note that became a screech. It was impossible to sit on the wing of the bridge any more, and the watch cowered in the pilothouse. More and more water was flooding the well deck, and, as the ship lunged into the trough, even her high bow was almost buried. I sent the bow lookout to the flying bridge. He stood with his back to the wind and looked aft.

I went into the chart room. Little Horrid, the monkey, was sitting on the chart table. He had left dirty paw marks all over the chart. I cursed him and chased him out. Carefully I examined the chart. There was the land, far away, and here was our course, a thin gray line. Our position, a neat dot in the middle of the white expanse, had been left by Mr. Crane when he had gone off watch. I picked up an eraser and carefully removed the stains left by the monkey. It was reassuring to work on the chart—everything was so precise, so completely exact. Distance measured to a tenth of a mile, courses measured to a degree. I went out on the bridge and sat on my stool staring out over the sea. Suddenly there was a tearing noise right overhead. I looked up in time to see my awning from the flying bridge go sailing away like a great flapping kite. “I should have had it taken in,” I thought, and went into the chart room to look at the anemometer. It hovered between seventy and eighty knots. Quite a wind, I thought, but not too bad if it doesn't get worse.

At one o'clock I went below for lunch. The cook had not attempted to supply anything but hot soup and sandwiches. Our chairs were lashed to the table and they slewed back and forth in their lashings as we ate. Wet dish cloths had been placed on the table to reduce the sliding of the dishes, but still we had to clutch our half-full bowls in both hands.

“Where's Mr. Warren?” I asked.

“In his stateroom,” Mr. Rudd replied. “I haven't seen him come out for two days.”

When I had finished eating I went to Mr. Warren's stateroom. I found him huddled in his bunk.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said tonelessly. “I'm all right. Thanks for standing my watches. I'll be up and around pretty soon.”

“Forget it,” I said. “I'm going to have Boats stand your watch. He can do it as well as any of us.”

That night I had a cot placed on the bridge and slept there. In the middle of the night I awoke with a sensation of unexpected motion and found my cot had escaped its lashing and slid across the pilothouse into the wheel. I jumped up and relashed it. While I worked I hung on to the base of the engine-room telegraph. The ship crashed into a sea and sent me spinning to the deck. Picking myself up, I looked out toward the bow. Nothing but blackness, but somehow the blackness seemed to be moving past the window like a swift river of ink. The wind screeched. I lay down on my cot and clung to the edge of it. Somehow I slept.

As soon as I got up in the morning I knew that the wind was worse. The shuddering of the ship shook everything on the bridge, and the bow for the first time was completely burying itself in green water. Each time it rose to a sea it sent torrents of water surging back into the well deck. I watched White open the forecastle door. Boats had rigged a life line from the forecastle door across the well deck to the after passageway. White clung to it and waded along. The ship plunged, staggered, and reared upward. A wave like surf on a beach rolled from the bow aft, and smothered White. For a moment he completely disappeared. I thought he was lost. The water poured through the scuppers. Finally White emerged, kneeling on the deck with both arms around the life line. Quickly he got to his feet and sprinted aft. I telephoned the forecastle and told all hands to stay there until the storm was over. The ship became divided into two islands, with the flooded well deck in between. Glancing at the anemometer, I saw the wind had reached a velocity of ninety knots.

The wind and sea combed the decks. The canvas boat covers went and the boats themselves vibrated in their lashings. The forecastle deck was swept clear of lines. A chest of swabs and sweepers went. Each time the ship dropped from a sea she buried her bow deeper. The anchor winch was stripped of its canvas cover and disappeared in green water each time we pitched. The ship recoiled and shuddered. Living aboard here was like living inside a beaten drum. I called up Mr. Rudd.

“Are we taking any water in the bilges?” I asked.

“We're beginning to,” he said. “I've got the pumps going.”

I sat down on my stool and thought. “This is enough of this,” I said to myself. I telephoned Mr. Rudd again and told him that I was going to ask for a lot of power in a few moments.

“What the hell are you going to do?” he asked.

“Turn her and take it on her stern,” I answered. “Send somebody up and warn all hands to hang on.”

I telephoned the men in the forecastle to hold tight to their bunks. For a moment I waited, then just when one great sea had passed and left us in a momentary calm, I ordered the rudder put hard over and rang up full speed ahead. The ship turned. Suddenly she rolled. I grabbed for the engine-room telegraph and hung on. Over she went, till my feet slipped from under me and I felt as though I were hanging from the ceiling. The helmsman supported himself on the wheel. A green wave crashed against the side of the ship and burst open the door of the pilothouse. With her decks at a ninety degree angle, the ship lay completely on her side. For a moment I thought she was going to turn all the way over. A solid sheet of water swept through the bridge and almost tore me away from the engine-room telegraph. I glanced around and saw that the helmsman was still there. Riveting my eyes to the compass, I saw we were still turning.

Gradually the ship brought her stem into the wind and began to right herself. Reluctantly she came up. I rang the engines back to slow again and had the rudder put amidships. The stern lifted to the seas. Because we were running with the storm, the wind did not seem so strong. Cautiously I ventured out through the broken pilothouse door. Our starboard boat was gone; the seas had swept it from its davits and taken with it all the deck boxes. It didn't matter. I called down to Mr. Rudd to turn the engines off completely. We drifted. Our screws dragging through the water kept our stern to the wind. The ship rolled more than she had, but she no longer shook; like a boxer, she retreated before the blows. The wind howled over her and white foam curled along her decks, but she did not suffer as she had before.

I went back into the chart room and examined the chart. Taking up the parallel rules, I fingered them thoughtfully. The wind was blowing from the north, or perhaps the northeast. We, then, would be drifting southwest. Probably we were making good a course of about two zero zero. I glanced at the anemometer. It hovered just over a hundred knots. Probably we were drifting at a speed of about four knots. I plotted our position. The water on the bridge had not entered the chart room. The chart was still white and dry and definite. The lines showing the degrees of latitude and longitude ran precisely across it and the compass rose stamped in the middle of it divided the circle into an exact three hundred and sixty degrees.

On the bridge the spray mixed with the air and obscured everything. All night we drifted. I did not sleep. Gradually the wind was taking on a new note. It became a fiendish melody, an idiot's falsetto that seemed to contain a deliberate intent of destruction. I sat on the bridge with it beating in my ears, and suddenly it seemed to me that the wind was quite simply out to get me. I could think of nothing else—there seemed to be something personal about the wind. “This is no time to get silly,” I told myself. For a moment I sat dismally looking at the seas which reared around us like great, fluid mountain ranges. There was no horizon, only the moving gray slopes of water bounded and combined with the dirty white murk of the sky. Quickly I returned to the chart room and closed the door. There the wind sang a little less loudly in my ears. Sharpening a pencil, I advanced our position on the basis of a speed of four knots, course two zero zero. The anemometer read a hundred and ten knots.

When I returned to the deck I saw a black banner of smoke and a tongue of orange fire reaching from the stern forward. “My God, we're afire!” I thought, but I stared aft and saw that the wind was pulling flame out of the galley stack. The smoke made an exact right angle to the stack and a horrible, greedy, sucking noise accompanied it. I telephoned below to tell the cook to shut off the galley range.

“I just have, sir,” he said. “The damn thing is red hot, and it hadn't been lit five minutes!”

Returning on deck, I saw that the smoke had decreased sharply. I watched it while it thinned to nothing, then returned to the chart room. The anemometer had climbed to a hundred and fifteen knots. Looking at the chart, I suddenly began to ask myself questions. Were we drifting at a speed of four knots? No patent log would stay astern of us and it was impossible to take any sights. Were we making good a course of two hundred degrees? I couldn't tell. The neat lines and pinpoints on the chart appeared ironic. The polished black parallel rules slid across the chart table to the deck. I did not pick them up. I didn't know where we were. It didn't make much difference—I was sure we were in the open sea away from obstructions, but I had no exact position. Suddenly I began imagining things. How did I know there were no reefs near? How fast had we been drifting? I steadied myself and, picking up the parallel rules from the deck, I carefully plotted our position when we had left the convoy. From that point I led a line across the chart to the point where we had been when I had turned our stern to the seas. From this dot on the chart I drew a line southwest, and at the end of that line I put a little circle and labeled it, “Estimated position.” I felt better.

During the night the wind changed. It veered back and forth, but still increased. The anemometer read a hundred and twenty-eight knots. When morning came I saw that the wind was from the east. It had changed so gradually that it was impossible to plot a course change. I took the parallel rules and dividers and put them in the desk drawer. For a moment I studied the neat chart, but I plotted no new position.

Just before dusk I went below. I was so tired that I could barely stand. In the galley the cook gave me a cup of soup he had heated in the electric coffee machine.

“Are we all right, sir?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Everything's going fine.”

When I had finished the soup I went to Mr. Rudd's stateroom. I found him wedged in his bunk with blankets.

“How's it going?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said automatically, but then I sat down.

“I don't have to fool you, Mr. Rudd,” I said. “To tell you the truth I don't know where in hell we are. I can't judge the rate of drift, and with the wind veering around like this I don't know in what direction it's blowing us.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Mr. Rudd. “We'll make out all right.”

“If the wind goes down pretty soon we'll be all right,” I said. “There's no land near us now. I'm pretty sure of that.”

“Say the hell with it,” said Mr. Rudd. “You can't do anything about it. Let her drift and say the hell with it. Well come out of it all right.”

Something about Mr. Rudd's voice made me look at him closely. He was smiling and there was a look of unbelievable serenity on his face. His serenity was so complete that it was unnatural. Suddenly a suspicion stole over me and robbed me of the confidence I had drawn from Mr. Rudd. I stared at him.

“I know why you're so God damn calm,” I said. “You don't give a damn if we sink or not!”

Mr. Rudd smiled at me. “That's right,” he said. “I don't worry about it.”

“You simply don't care!” I said. “It's monstrous. It's worse than suicide. You just don't care one way or the other!”

Mr. Rudd sat up in his bunk. “What the hell's the matter with you?” he asked. “You better get hold of yourself. What do you want me to do, worry along with you?”

I put my hand up and massaged my eyes. “No,” I said. “There's nothing much to worry about. I'm sorry I said those things.”

I left Mr. Rudd's stateroom. Above me I heard a chattering, and saw Little Horrid, the monkey, crouched on a pipe in a corner of the passageway. I had forgotten all about him, and I wondered how he had managed to sneak below. He looked sick and did not even hop out of the way as I passed him.