The morning crept by slowly. The cook cleaned away the coffee cups and replaced them with a bucket of cold water and a dipper. The men smoked. They flipped the b.u.t.ts into a can Boats had placed for them. The bell on the engine-room voice tube rang. It was Mr. Rudd.
"Anything going on?" he asked.
"Nope," I said, "nothing since the boys opened fire on a C-47."
"Well, hang on," said Mr. Rudd. "That first plane this morning was no C-47. They know where we are now. They"ve got us all plotted on their charts."
"Sure," I said. "Well stay at general quarters till dark, anyhow."
I turned and said to Mr. Crane, "You better tell the men they"ll have to stand by the guns till after dark. Then they"ll know what they"re in for."
"Anything you say, sir," Mr. Crane replied. He relayed the order.
Still we sat and the day grew hotter and nothing happened. At eleven-thirty I called to Mr. Crane and told him he"d better take his noon lat.i.tude sight. He went into the chart room to get the s.e.xtant. I sat smoking and staring out over our port side into the limitless sky. Suddenly, so distinct that I had to believe it, I saw a plane only about twenty feet above the water flying directly at us.
"Open fire!" I shouted. "Open fire, open fire!"
The sudden clatter of our guns drowned out my voice. The plane grew nearer and nearer. The orange tracer bullets from our guns reached toward it. Behind us I could hear the opening thud of the five-inch guns on the Liberties. "They"re firing too," I thought. "I guess there"s no doubt about its being a j.a.p this time." Everything appeared to happen very slowly. The plane grew closer and closer. It was a short, stubby plane, with a radial engine. It was painted a light blue. The sun glinted from the plastic covering of the pilot"s seat. Behind us the thud of the guns on the Liberties grew louder.
"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are firing right across us," I thought. "I hope they don"t hit us." I never thought of the plane hitting us, or dropping a bomb or a torpedo or anything else. While I thought I watched the tracers arch from our own guns. Now they were flicking directly into the plane. Our whole ship was shaking and chattering from our guns. The orange tracers were gliding directly into the plane like elongated tongues of fire flicking a log.
Still the plane kept coming.
"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d can"t stand it much longer," I thought. "He"s got to crash."
Still he did not crash. When he appeared to be right on top of us a long object dropped from his belly and splashed into the water.
"Torpedo," my mind registered, but I did not think of it. My eyes were riveted on the plane, wondering when he was going to crash. He was so close now that I could see the twenty millimeter sh.e.l.ls splashing against his sides.
"He"s coming into us," I thought. "Suicide plane!" But before I had time really to feel that thought the plane banked around our bow, and still twenty feet above the water, he zigzagged right through the convoy. All around him guns kicked up the water like a rain squall, and tracers arched into him. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone, scuttling toward the opposite horizon. I stood watching after him. It seemed that I had stood there a long time when a geyser rose and obscured the old Hog Islander beside us. There was no sound that I could hear at all-only a white curtain of water that rose from the side of the old ship.
"The torpedo," I thought. "It"s got her."
Slowly the geyser subsided. For a moment the Hog Islander appeared exactly as she had been before; then she started to list slowly. I saw that she was falling behind the other ships. The signal light on her bridge started to blink furiously. The commodore answered. Their lights were turned a little from us, so it was immpossible to read them. Gradually the old ship fell astern of the others. The destroyer on our starboard side edged in toward her, then they started blinking to each other. As they fell astern we watched them. The Hog Islander appeared to be listing more and more to port, but before we could see what happened she had faded into the distance astern.
The Liberty ship which had been astern of her moved up to take her place.
Aboard our ship the men stood eagerly by their guns and discussed the attack. Two questions were uppermost in our minds: would the Hog Islander sink, would the j.a.p plane get back to its base? No one could understand how the plane had received so many hits and still kept in the air. The men somehow lost a little respect for our guns; they seemed nowhere near as deadly as they had.
As the afternoon wore on the ocean was as peaceful as ever. The convoy steamed on with no change except for the fact that the Hog Islander and the destroyer were gone. Once or twice we saw planes far away on the horizon, but they didn"t come near us. At one o"clock the cook brought up sandwiches and orangeade to the men. They ate fast. There was no more grumbling about standing by the guns. The cook worked quickly, always carried two trays at a time.
Immediately after night fell the commodore signaled a change of course. The ships wheeled clumsily in the night; they appeared to nudge each other over. On the flying bridge I had to strain my eyes to see the ship ahead of us. The wind was increasing. The SV-126 started to pitch heavily. As soon as the convoy was straightened out on the new course the commodore signaled us to commence zigzagging. I knew he was afraid the j.a.p planes had radioed submarines ahead of us our position, but I received his order with dread. What little visibility there was was fast decreasing. A thin rain started and fast developed into a deluge. The blurred shadow of the ship ahead of us disappeared completely, and we changed course every one and two minutes by watch alone.
On our starbord side I knew the ten-thousand-ton Liberty ship was lurching from side to side as she zigzagged, and I kept my eyes glued to the wet binoculars trying to catch sight of her. Suddenly she appeared so close to us that I had to twist my head up to look at her. We threw our rudder over and waited to see if we would turn fast enough to avoid a collision. The Liberty ship was so big in comparison to us that for a moment I thought I knew exactly how a dog must feel when it is run over by an automobile. The SV-126 turned and for a moment the Liberty ship and ourselves were on parallel courses, so near that I thought I could reach over the side and touch her. Between us the water was white from our wakes, and the steel sides of the Liberty glistened wetly and dimly, as though she were a huge wave that had reared up beside us. Slowly we drew away from her, and I could see her no more. I peered out into the rain, but she was gone, and I could only hear the threshing of her screw somewhere out in the darkness.
All night I stood on the flying bridge keeping the ship zigzagging every one and two minutes. The convoy moved across the ocean like a troop of drunks making their way across a dark field. Intermittently from the obscurity ahead I heard a deep, directionless whistle blast as one ship warned away another. Twice in the night we changed course. Our compa.s.s differed from those of the other ships, and as we zigzagged along the basic line set for us, I had constantly to vary the figure given to the helmsman. All thought of our geographical position slipped from my mind, and I cared only about keeping with the other ships without running into them. As the dark hours slipped by I lost all track of time. The world became to me one infinite void of darkness and rain through which I moved as one shadow among others.
At five in the morning the darkness thinned a little, as though water were being poured into ink. Gradually around us the ships of the convoy separated themselves from the gloom and contracted into their old shapes again. The convoy had lost its original order. When full daylight came we found ourselves spread all over the sea. Ships had exchanged positions, columns were uneven, and far astern two ships straggled almost out of sight. The commodore signaled us to resume out position. The ships ahead slowed down and the ships astern gave a burst of speed. Gradually the convoy regained its old shape and proceeded across the sea once more in a military formation.
We sighted land a few minutes after ten in the morning. San Pedro Bay appeared before us as an extension of the horizon between two dark mounds of rock. As we neared the opening of the bay, the ships of our convoy fell into single file. Other ships appeared anch.o.r.ed ahead of us. When we steamed up the narrowing gulf, more and more ships appeared until we seemed to be threading our way up the streets of a floating city. All the Liberty ships, hospital ships, battleships and carriers I had originally seen in Hollandia were there, as though the fleet had been suddenly transplanted as a whole. One by one the vessels of our convoy dropped anchor. We continued up the narrow channel to Tacloban and nosed our way close to sh.o.r.e. Our anchor chain roared through the hawse pipe, we rung up "finished with engines" on the engine-room telegraph, and the SV-126 lay quietly waiting with her bow to the wind.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
AS SOON as we could get our boat in the water, I went ash.o.r.e to report to the port director with the manifest of our cargo. With elaborate nonchalance Mr. Warren offered to go in with me and see if there was any mail. As we approached the sh.o.r.e we examined it with interest. Tacloban, we had heard, was a city, and we had not seen a city for a long while. When we stepped from the boat to the pontoon dock, however, we saw only small, tumbledown shacks which looked as though they had been scattered at random over a pattern of muddy streets.
"What the h.e.l.l." Mr. Warren was disgusted. "It"s just New Guinea all over again."
In the port director"s office I had to wait in line with the skippers of some of the ships which had been in our convoy. They were all talking about the attack we had sustained.
"Did you get any of the planes?" a huge Scandinavian with a gold-encrusted cap asked me.
"No," I said, "I don"t think so. We hit that first one plenty of times, but I didn"t see him fall."
"We got two of them," the Scandinavian replied. "We"ve just painted two flags on our bridge."
"You got two of them?" a short man in khaki shirt ahead of him in line exclaimed. "What the h.e.l.l do you mean? We were right astern of you, and you didn"t hit a thing! We got those planes!"
The men waiting in line turned around and each gave his opinion of who shot down the planes.
"Wait a minute," the Scandinavian said. "How many of you have painted up flags?"
There was an embarra.s.sed silence followed by laughter. It developed that every commanding officer in line had claimed credit for at least one plane. Although only seven planes had been even sighted, over twenty flags had been painted on the bridges of the various ships in the convoy.
When I finally got to the port director"s desk, I was surprised to recognize the same man who had been port director in Milne Bay. He remembered me.
"You"re the man who had such a h.e.l.l of a time getting his mail!" he said. "Well, how"s your mail coming in now?"
"I don"t know," I replied. "I haven"t had time to call for it yet."
"The mail"s all fouled up," the port director answered. "You better just forget the whole thing. Your men will get used to not getting any mail after a while."
"They"re used to it now," I said.
When I handed him the manifest for our cargo he examined it carefully.
"What the h.e.l.l kind of a cargo is this?" he asked.
"Candy," I said. "Read it for yourself."
He examined the list carefully. "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned," he said at last. "Baby Ruth, chocolate-covered almond bars, and something called Sky Tops!"
"I know," I said. "When can I get into the docks to unload it?"
The port director folded the manifest neatly and handed it back to me. "No hurry," he replied. "You just swing to the hook and wait. We"ve got ammunition to unload, and gasoline, and canned stuffs. It"ll take a while, but we"ll fit you in. somewhere. You just wait."
I turned and walked back to the boat dock. Mr. Warren was there waiting for me. A quick inspection of the boat showed me that there were no mailbags there, but I was surprised to see that Mr. Warren did not, superficially at least, look depressed.
"No mail," he said almost gaily. "What the h.e.l.l. I"m not surprised that they have trouble getting it here."
I looked at him. It suddenly came to me that he was relieved not to be faced with the necessity of finding his wife had still not written to him.
We lay anch.o.r.ed in Tacloban, and the days there pa.s.sed almost as slowly as had the days in New Guinea. There were differences, however. In Leyte air attack could be expected at any moment. The anchor watch was doubled. A strict blackout was maintained all through the night. Portholes and doors were curtained, with the result that not even a small breeze could relieve the smothering warmth. It rained even more often than it had in Milne Bay; the sight of a blue sky seemed a rarity. We all waited to go into the docks to unload. Somehow I thought we would all feel better when the candy was taken out of the holds and the ship could get to work again. Nothing happened, however, and the ship drifted in circles around her anchor with the changing tides.
The men painted the inside of the ship, but the dampness had penetrated everywhere; soon after they had finished the paint rose in bubbles on the bulkheads and peeled off. Except on the few sunny days, we gave up painting and the men lived in enforced idleness. During the clammy heat of the afternoon they lay in their bunks, naked and sweating, and read. In the evenings if it were not raining they came on deck, fidgeted, leaned on the rail, and musingly stared at the sky. Sometimes three warning red flares shot into the sky from the air raid warning station ash.o.r.e. Then the men ran to their guns with an air of satisfaction and antic.i.p.ation. In December, however, the air raids in Leyte were largely over. A few shots were sometimes heard, a few searchlights swept the sky and a white rocket sailed up to announce that all was clear. Then the men dejectedly walked from their guns and returned to their basic occupation of just sitting.
"Aw, h.e.l.l," I heard White say after one all-clear, "I thought we were going to see something."
"What"s the matter with you?" Guns returned crossly. "Haven"t you seen enough d.a.m.n shooting? Do you want an attack?"
"I don"t know," White answered. "I"d like something to happen. It seems like we"ve been here for years. I"d like something ..."
One night when we had been lying in Tacloban for ten days the three warning flares shot up from the sh.o.r.e and were immediately pa.s.sed by a shower of yellow tracer bullets. I waited for the pause and immediate all-clear, but instead an increased roar of gunfire followed. I ran on deck. The men had gone to their guns without general quarters having been rung. Looking at the sky, I was staggered. Instead of blackness my eye met almost a solid crisscross of orange tracer fire. The whole sky looked like the western horizon at the time of the setting sun. All around us sh.o.r.e batteries were firing, and every ship in the ship-jammed harbor was hammering out sh.e.l.ls. Searchlights fingered the clouds, and the smoke of the big guns drifted low over the water. Everywhere there was such a din that no individual gun could be heard. Suddenly I felt the deck beneath me tremble; looking forward, I saw our own twenty-millimeters firing. Frantically I looked around us for a sight of a plane. There was nothing. Following the path of the tracers from the many guns, I tried to find a focal point where a plane might be. There was none. Each ship appeared to be firing in a different direction. I rushed to the bridge to find from Mr. Crane what the target was. Before I got there the shooting stopped as suddenly as though a masterful orchestra leader had cut it at its crescendo. Complete silence reigned over the harbor.
"What was it?" I asked Mr. Crane.
"I don"t know," he said. "The men up forward just started firing."
"What were you shooting at?" I asked them.
"Right over there, sir," they answered. "We thought we saw a plane."
"Right over where?"
"There, sir." They all pointed in different directions.
The next morning a bulletin was issued to all ships. It stated that no plane at all had flown over the harbor and that no one had seen anything. "In the future," the bulletin ordered, "commanding officers will exercise judgement before opening fire."
Christmas approached. A week before it came the men started to become aware of it and bemoaned the fact that they had not sent gifts home early enough. Nevertheless they began pounding coins into rings again, and they bought sh.e.l.l necklaces from the Filipinos. Mr. Warren was busy every morning censoring packages. Wenton, who had been acting as yeoman, began work on a large paper Christmas tree for the ship. Traditionally Christmas trees are made from brooms aboard ship, and he started with this basic idea. On the handle of a broom he painstakingly pasted long shreds of paper which he cut to curve outward. When the broom was properly foliaged with paper he took it out on deck and sprayed it with green paint. Disappointingly, the only green paint available was that which we used to paint the outside of the hull. The Christmas tree turned out to be so exactly the color of the ship that it did not stand out much as a decoration. It looked better, however, when blobs of red paint were added to represent ornaments.
For some time I had been trying to think of a way in which we could celebrate Christmas. Of course we would knock off work on Christmas, but the men had had nothing to do for so long because of the weather that idleness would hardly bring distinction to the day. Ash.o.r.e Mr. Warren was able to draw a double ration of beer for the men, but that amounted to only two cans apiece and could not be expected to provide many hours of conviviality. The day before Christmas I had no plans at all. Christmas Eve turned out to be a surprisingly cloudless evening, however, and on an impulse I decided it would be fun to gather on the fantail and sing carols. Calling Boats into my cabin, I told him to tell everyone there would be carol singing on the stern at eight o"clock. A few moments later I heard the shrill call of his boatswain"s pipe followed by his hoa.r.s.e voice calling, "All hands will report on the fantail at twenty hundred for singing!"
Hurriedly I got Boats into my cabin. "It"s not an order, Boats," I said. "Don"t make it sound like an order."
He looked a little bewildered. "You want "em back there to sing, don"t you?" he asked.
"Yes, Boats," I replied. "But ask them. I just want those who want to sing."
"All right, sir," answered Boats resignedly, and a moment later I heard his boatswain"s pipe again, followed by his deep voice calling, "All hands will report on the fantail at twenty hundred for singing, all hands will report on the fantail at twenty hundred for singing." Then there was a pause, and Boats finished, "This is not an order, this is not an order."
Mr. Warren had the cooks make up a large pot of orangeade and some doughnuts to place on the stern for the singers. The cooks grumbled a good deal about the extra work. They had just cleaned up their galley after supper and did not relish the idea of lighting off the big oil range again.
"But it"s Christmas, d.a.m.n it," I heard Mr. Warren say defensively. The stovelid banged in reply.
As eight o"clock drew near I began feeling as nervous as a schoolgirl giving her first party. What if n.o.body came to sing carols? I went aft to the fantail early and saw that the doughnuts and orangeade were set on a table with white dish towels spread over it for a table cloth. At quarter to eight Mr. Crane and Mr. Warren and Mr. Rudd came loyally aft and waited with me. At five minutes to eight Boats came aft and stood shifting from one foot to the other.
"Well," I said at length, "I guess we have enough to start. What will we sing?"
There was a silence, and Mr. Rudd finally replied, "How about "The First Noel"?"
I looked at him with grateful surprise. I had expected him to sit by with his usual sardonic grin, but instead he was serious and somehow dignified.
"All right," I said, "let"s sing "The First Noel.""
No one started to sing. I glanced around looking for help, and suddenly Mr. Rudd began to sing in a soft, strangely pleasant voice.
"The first Noel the angels did say Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay ..."
I joined him as quickly as possible, and Boats rumbled along a word or two behind us. Mr. Crane hummed and Mr. Warren piped up with a rather brittle tenor.
"In fields as they Lay keeping their sheep On a cold winter"s night that was so deep ..."
I heard footsteps, and looking up I saw White, Guns, and the quartermaster coming rather hesitantly toward us. Something about the way they walked made me think that I should not notice their coming and I looked quickly away. They stood a little apart and scarcely audibly began to sing with us.
"Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.
Born is the King of Israel ..."
The verse ended raggedly, and there was a long pause.
"Anybody know the second verse?" Mr. Rudd asked.
There was no answer.
"How about "Silent Night"?" I suggested.
"All right," said Mr. Rudd. ""Silent Night.""
Again he led off and the others fell in behind him. Glancing at White, I saw him standing with a very solemn expresion. Just behind him was Wortly, the c.o.xswain, who was for some reason grinning. Farther forward, standing by the rail, were almost the whole crew. The cook stood outside the galley, still in his ap.r.o.n, and Whysowitz was sitting on the deck fingering his pipe.
The men joined in surprising harmony.
"Silent night, Holy night, All is calm, all is bright, Round yon virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in heavenly peace ..."
The song ended, and there was a deep pause in which everybody drew in his breath. Suddenly Wortly snickered. Boats glared at him and he was still.
"How about some doughnuts and orangeade?" I asked.
The men started talking together in low voices and advanced toward the table. For a few minutes everyone ate and drank the insipid artificial orangeade.
"Let"s sing again," I said at last. "How about "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"?"
The sound of eating died, and several men set their cups down on the table. I started to sing as best I could.