Jonah Watch (12 page)

Racca, his smart mouth moaning, his shirt torn away, was held against the lightly oiled plates by men who kept him from flopping. Snow had Racca's broken arm extended. Howard crawled forward with the aid kit, off balance, bumping against a protecting rail beside the engine. Brace, off balance and crawling, bumped Howard from behind as Brace attempted to pass splints that were not yet needed. Racca's eyes were bright with fear and pain, and with the sharp hurt of helplessness as
Adrian
slid, thumped, and the voices of the engines were blanked even as he lay beside them; blanked by thunder from forward and the drum of the sea against the hull. Howard eased forward with a styrette of morphine, got the needle into the skin and crushed the small glass tube. Racca was looking at him or beyond him, talking, talking. Howard bent forward. Racca was saying, "Jonah, Jonah, Jonah," and Howard, who was not without guilts of his own, wondered if Racca was talking about him.

That word, jonah, that name—sparked in the minds and
affrighted hearts of men, but the spark was dull and obscure during those first desperate night hours required for the wind to drop. The sea piled, ran as high as most men could ever remember having seen it run. As the wind dropped, the sea built.
Adrian
made heavy, tortured way. It buried its bows. Green water still reached the bridge, but water no longer swamped the flying bridge. On the flying bridge, the new shoring had disappeared from beneath light, stout cable. Speculation said that the entire bridge had been twisted, for the quick-release gear on the cable was still fastened. The flag locker was dented. The main deck was missing all but a single locker, but the winch was intact. The boat still hung in the davits like a small, white miracle. The 20-mm guns were wet beneath their waxed canvas covers. When Conally broke into the line locker, belowdecks and aft, he found an inch of water shipped through the seal of the watertight hatch. Conally swore to Howard that the inch of water was more scary than any ghost. That inch of water, although Conally did not say as much, was an insult to intelligence, like finding that the laws of gravity and flotation were repealed. Gunner Majors, who looked like a halfback ought to look, behaved like a halfback as he bounced about the boat deck. Majors was in definite hazard as he attempted to dry and oil those useless and silly guns. In the bow, the three-inch fifty had been stripped of its waterproof shroud. The muzzle plug was knocked out. Water filled the barrel. Water crashed and swept the gun as the water tumbled high to the bridge, and there was nothing Majors could do about that.

That word Jonah, that name—sparked from dull glow to brilliant, flashing fear as soon as the midwatch began.

Levere was a hawk-faced silhouette, more rigidly set in the high captain's chair than any welded fixture. Dane and Chappel alternated watches, and it was Chappel who took the mid. Belowdecks, Racca was strapped into his bunk, buzzy and drugged with codeine after the morph wore off. There was nothing to be done with Racca. One by one men dropped by his bunk, clung to the rail of the bunk, and joked to Racca, who was nearly unconscious and fairly beyond caring about anything but his one preoccupation. He hummed, sang the word, Jonah, in a dopey and drugged voice, and even Glass could not insult him enough to bring him to another subject. Howard substituted Brace's name for Racca's on the engine room watch list, and—there being nothing else that he could do, either—waited.

Where it came from, no man knew, but the spectre arrived as an independent mist walking across the water, or slightly above the water, like a wanderer across a barren planet, its meandering accidently crossed by one of those ships doomed by myth to cruise an unending and haunted search. The spectre might have passed unnoticed in the night, or might have been mistaken for a dash of phosphorescence that lighted the dark, breaking sea.

Quartermaster Chappel checked his lights to see if he still had any. The searchlight on the port wing failed. Chappel sent word for electrician Wysczknowski to lay to the bridge. Bosun striker Joyce had the helm, and yeoman Howard was alternating radio and radar watch with James. Chappel entered the bridge from the port wing, where he had returned to fiddle the light. His horsey-looking head, his bent stance as he glanced at the plot, made him look like a mild-mannered piece of ivory trapped in a chaotic game of chess. The sea mounted from the bow, rode like a tide against the house, rose crashing in white and black shatters. Chappel's foul weather gear was slick. When water dripped from his watch cap onto the chart, he seemed stricken with small pain. He dabbed at the blot with his handkerchief, probably the only handkerchief aboard.

"It may be a circuit," he said. "Permission to leave watch and check the starboard light."

Levere grunted. "I have the deck. Go ahead."

Chappel bent over the log and wrote meticulously in his accurate manner that was said to drive Dane crazy. Joyce spun the wheel, looked like a man searching for the meaning of life as he stared into the gyro repeater.

"Need a hand?" Howard asked Chappel.

"I believe you have the radio and radar watch. I believe there is traffic on the radio right now."

Howard turned the receiver higher. Through the static a voice was yammering, high-pitched and unreadable. The voice was faint, but while the words said nothing, the crackling, blanking static did not conceal the hysteria in the voice. "Stay on that," Chappel said, "as a matter of interest. Yes?" He undogged the hatch to the starboard wing, stepped through, and the wind swallowed his grumbles.

From such great distance there was nothing about that radio traffic that could affect
Adrian
, a ship already on a job. Howard listened in protest but with a bad conscience. Levere sat like a statue and faced the high speed wipers, a statue which heard every bearable sound.

" ... Fox niner-seven,'' said the radio, and returned to its hysteric gabble. Howard leaned forward. From the helm came a small, uneasy movement from Joyce.

"Cutter
Able
," Levere said. "Let's have that box turned all the way up." Beneath the small glow of the starboard running light, Chappel's horse face was greenly blanched and bent low over the canvas cover of the searchlight. He released securing lines. Howard turned the receiver full, and the bridge was filled with the flak of static that gabbled, bubbled, spit and cracked. From the starboard wing the searchlight came on, and it threw a beam across the heaving, rolling, breaking sea. The beam began to shift as Chappel traversed the range of the light, checking meticulously.

"Gabble pop flak gabble fire," said the radio. "Lost puff," said the radio, "lost pow ... "

"Cap—"

"I heard it. Get Chappel in here."

The searchlight remained fixed and the spectre moved into the beam, walking, walking.
Adrian
pitched. Chappel met the movement and traversed. The spectre walked, walked. It moved across the tops of swells with the steady pace of a man on an errand.

"Belay that order," said Levere.

Joyce gave a small nicker of fear. He looked up, remembered the compass, spun the wheel.

"Cap."

"I see it."

Adrian
pitched forward and the searchlight traversed. The spectre walked, and in the strong light the wrinkles of its clothing were unaffected by water. It was dry. The dungaree pants crimped at the back of the knee, and the dungaree shirt followed the swinging movement of arms. It was not possible in that light to see either more or less than what was there, and what was there was a set of sailor's dungarees walking without benefit of head, hands or feet. Howard gasped, had a happy and innocuous and stupid thought. He shifted the scale of the radar down to one mile range and hid his face in the mask. When he raised his head from the mask, the spectre was gone.

"No contact."

"I didn't expect one." Levere stood away from the captain's chair. He spoke as quietly as ever, but he—who had roamed every latitude of those northern waters and who would tell tales—was awed.

"Nan mike fox two-one from nan mike fox, priority." District radio, with its larger transmitter, came in clear.

"Callin'
Abner
."

"Fitz two-one," said the radio.

Howard reached for a message blank. On the wing, green shadowed, Chappel covered the searchlight. His lips moved in green and serious, dark-shadowed conversation with himself—or with the starboard running light, or with the sea. He worked rapidly, or as rapidly as a meticulous and ritualistic character could work.

"Information all floating units," said District, "information Officer in Charge New Bedford."

From the rear of the bridge, where he stood after having silently arrived, and shocking as a present spectre, electrician Wysczknowski gave a small moan, a terrible sigh. He watched heads jerk before him as if hit with a cattle prod. "Calling
Abner
," he said apologetically.

"If you ever do that again ... " Levere heard his own voice. "The port searchlight is out," he said, so quietly that his words were nearly swallowed in the crashing sound of water. "We'll need that light, directly."

The dogs on the hatch turned slowly as Chappel methodically reentered from the starboard wing. The dogs turned so slowly that any man could see that Chappel was arguing with himself, was forcing control; appealing to that formalistic and methodical self which had hauled him through so many scrapes. He entered the bridge, carefully dogged the hatch, turned and stood momentarily silent and dripping. His long face rose above the high collar of his waterproofs. The effect was of a man sired by experimental and equestrian gods. He backhanded water from his face, muttered, walked to the log, then hesitated above the entry. Chappel had logged ice, storm, death, and the loss of ships, but he had never logged a ghost.

"Unexplained weather phenomena, of no consequence." Levere's voice was pitched to serene authority that allowed no grand opinions. "Cutter
Able
is on fire. Give me
Abner
's position."

Chappel nodded as if the new information made complete sense. He wrote meticulously, then turned to the radio file and to his charts.

"I got the proceed-and-assist," said Howard. "I can't make
Abner
's send."

"That," said Chappel abstractly, "is the reason God made quartermasters." He turned to Howard. "You have not logged Wysczknowski to the bridge and to repair."

Howard turned, indignant.

"When your log is complete," said Levere, "raise
Aphrodite
. Then get on twenty mile range. I estimate another two hours."

"Watchstander?"

"Not unless you want to stand it," Chappel said. "I don't want to risk a man out there."

Howard, who in some vague way understood that he was taking flak because of the unknowable, and having perhaps been accused of being a Jonah, chose the course of wisdom and kept his big mouth shut.

"There is no excuse for a log to get behind," Levere said, "but the yeoman has been busy."

"I make it about twenty miles," Chappel told Levere, "assuming both ships maintained their direction of search since last position report."

Levere grunted above the crashing of waves, found a deep grunt at the top of a swell. The grunt expressed the opinion that, because it was
Able
, he was being asked to make a huge assumption. Howard hesitated between a sigh and a sneer, but he did not log the grunt.

Howard was relieved from watch a half hour before
Adrian
closed
Aphrodite
, when
Aphrodite
's lights lay like a dusty glow on the horizon. Radioman James came to relieve the watch and assume his contact station. His natural, pale, meager remoteness was overlaid by a pallor like a man who, having vomited all but that last resource, had taken to vomiting blood. Howard looked at James, muttered to him that Chappel was raring to eat someone. Howard prepared to leave the bridge.

"How bad is it?" James whispered.

"You sick?"

"I'm never sick. Never. You know that."

"It's bad."

"They don't deserve that," James said. "It's a lousy ship, but nobody deserves that."

"I meant the other."

"The other isn't true." James spoke with firm conviction. "Levere logged weather, so it's weather. We all got to believe that."

"You weren't here."

"Has there been a situation report?"

"Static. All I can tell you is that they're still afloat."

Howard left the bridge and headed for the messdeck. He passed the galley where Lamp wedged his huge bulk in a corner and built cold ham sandwiches. On the messdeck, hands not on watch were assembled and ready to take station. Third engineman Masters, as lanky as Wysczknowski, but with a face like an elf's, looked up at Howard. He leered. Masters sat on the far, starboard side of the compartment. On some days, Masters appeared less grotesque than on others, or maybe it was that on some days he did not leer.

Men clustered on the damp, steaming messdeck. A few chewed on sandwiches, and the more adventurous attempted to drink rancid coffee from half-filled mugs; for even Lamp could not claim fresh coffee from that sea.
Adrian
rose in large and generous movements, coasting plumply down high, broad swells. The sea ran wide and huge. Shocks went through the ship each time it bottomed, and the half-full mugs spouted small brown geysers onto foul weather gear that was already soaked.

Men stared at the coffee-splashed surfaces of tables. They muttered to each other, a half-dozen private conversations. They seemed a collection of broken parts—a watch cap pulled over one man's brows so that his eyes were dark sparks beneath the darker wool. An arm lay forward on a table, as if about to be chopped, the arm ending in a white clenched fist. Boots lay like dismembered feet, and a man's back arched in a questioning line as he bent and whispered to a fellow. A leg, Masters's, was contemptuously raised to plant a wet boot against a washed bulkhead, and streaks of dirty water ran down the clean white paint. Faces were halved by the huddled-together, half-dozen private conversations. There was no banter, no sarcasm, and men seemed to be isolating themselves from all but their most trusted chums. Brace, that nebulous part-time steward, part-time engineman, part-time seaman, sat alone and crouched, balled into himself in a far corner. He did not look like Amon, but he looked as Amon used to look just before crawling under a table.

Conally sat at the small table used by the bridge gang. Howard looked at Brace, then crossed the messdeck to sit with Conally. Footsteps sounded on the ladder and Glass appeared on the messdeck. He looked like he was casing a bank. He moved quietly to join Conally and Howard.

"Before you get started with your mouths," Glass said, "I just wanta say that Racca is your basic dirty guy. I get along with him, but that's what he is."

"How is he?" Howard was startled, having forgotten his patient.

"A lousy busted arm. We musta had ten busted arms on this ship."

"Well, ten busted somethings."

"All mouth," Glass said. "Did he break his mouth, we wouldn't be having this." Glass looked around the messdeck. He seemed like a citizen about to complain that you could never find a policeman when you wanted one.

"I ain't Lamp," Conally said, "but a guy can't help it if he gets to thinkin'."

"I've been on watch."

"Racca's passed the word," said Glass. "Racca claims the kid Jonahed him into a bust arm, so the kid could get to the engine room."

"Brace wasn't anywhere near Racca."

"And Racca says it makes no difference. All a Jonah's got to do is be on board."

"These guys don't believe that. Nobody's that dumb." Howard looked about the messdeck as if he viewed the crew for the first time.

"No, but these guys are scared."

"A guy does get to thinkin'."

"You're a bosun's mate," Glass said, "you're not a pansy." Glass stood, a sort of passion of indignation driving him to his feet. "Going on deck," he said. "Up where the air's only fulla water." He could hardly have moved faster had he been making a getaway.

"I'd ought to book that punk," said Conally. "Only probably he's right." Conally seemed lost in thought or dream. "Lost that flyer, got that bumboat, and the steward sent crazy over Jensen. Busted arm, ghost on the mudflats, ghost ahead-a the ship, and Jensen talking in the fog ... " He stopped, looked at Howard, and Conally was a man who had tripped himself.

"He only grabbed me by the shoulder," Howard said. "It really happened."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm not Lamp, either. I know what happened."

"He said look out for ice." Conally looked around the messdeck, bent forward like a conspirator. "Said, ‘Ice—look out or you'll lose', an' that's all he said."

"You're sure it was Jensen?"

"Chum, do fish swim?"

Brace huddled, seemed entranced by Masters's dirty boot plunked against the bulkhead that Brace had scrubbed so many times. Brace's face was white with either fear or anger. As Conally and Howard watched, anger moved ahead of fear. A flush came to Brace's cheeks. His forehead wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed with the kind of joy men feel when they are about to beat one offender or another into the deck. Brace stood, his way blocked by men sitting at the table. He shook his head like a punchy hearing bells.

"Lemme past," he said. "I've had enough of this." He pushed the man next to him, and that man was Wysczknowski. Wysczknowski looked up, saw the flush across the pale face.

"You got a right to try," he told Brace, "but you try it on the end of a pier, not on this ship."

"Let the Jonah past," Masters said. "Let's see who can break what." He began to rise, but before he rose, he deliberately dragged the boot down the bulkhead.

Wysczknowski shook his head in a sort of sad amazement. "You just made a nice piece of work for yourself, chum. When we pick up this tow, then you clean that mess. If you don't get it clean enough, you'll paint it."

Conally tapped Howard. "Get ready to get into this." The two men stood.

From forward a hatch boomed, a dog slammed and Dane's voice rumbled like engines. He called all hands to station. Conally and Howard stopped, paused, and Wysczknowski looked at Brace as if Brace was a circus poodle wearing a bow, a pink one. Brace stood in a futility of frustration as men reached for their gear and staggered forward to the ladder like soldiers making a stumbling attack across a plowed field. Brace looked at his clenched fists, caught his balance against a bulkhead, looked at the dark, dirty stain where Masters's foot had rested. He looked back at his fists as if they were pistols that had misfired. His fists unfolded into hands, and his hands trembled from a supply of adrenaline that had nowhere to go.

"I haven't got a station," he muttered to Wysczknowski. "I don't know who I'm working for."

"In that case you're working for me," Conally told him. "Get crackin'." Conally spun away and up the ladder. Howard headed for the medical locker. Brace followed, shrugging into his tarred and patched foul weather jacket.

Aphrodite
lay stern to the sea. A captain who had worked miracles in keeping the thing alive was working a little practical magic. With pumps meeting the leak, but not overcoming it, and with an engine running high and bearing a load for which it was not designed,
Aphrodite
's crew of two deckhands and an engineman shifted everything moveable to starboard. The vessel's owner, who in later years would tire of buying senators and arrange to become one (his colleagues—having made their own arrangements—then calling him an honorable man), huddled life-jacketed and chattering in the wheelhouse, like a baboon that fears it will be robbed of a cookie.

The yacht lay head down as it backed into the swell. Floodlights cast nebulous pools to illuminate its narrow deck. The tall masts rose into darkness, and here and there, rigging that had been blown or cut away snapped, flapped, made near ghostly movements in the dark. The floodlights turned the surrounding sea blacker. The waterlogged bow was like a dull club as the thing slid into the trough. At each crash the bow dipped. Water swirled at the rails, crossed the forward deck beneath the lights in foaming currents, white, threatening, and eerie. Then, the reversing propeller extracted the bow from the sea as the stern lifted. The yacht heeled to starboard, and Howard, arriving on deck, did not at first see how that could reasonably be so.

"Runnin' on his port tank," Conally said. "Trying to shift weight to starboard so's to lift the leak."

"What's the word? Do we tow?"

"Pump if we can. Send a pump across. Maybe try to patch."

Floodlights along
Adrian
's deck and on the boat deck turned men into postlike figures of brilliance and shadow. The crew stood along the rail. From the darkened bridge shone the small glimmer of the chart light and the green glow from instruments. The radio threw static, blanked as Levere spoke to
Aphrodite
; then came static, and the clear answer from
Aphrodite
. Dane stood like a blot before the starboard running light, his head haloed in green. Brace stood beside Conally. He seemed both intimidated and defiant. Mutters from forward mentioned Brace. The mutters were deliberately pitched so that they could be heard along the rail, but not on the bridge. The sea rolled, dark, huge, cold and indifferent. Dane moved, disappeared into the dark bridge. A buzzer sounded from the engine room.

"Whatever we're going to do, we're doin' it," said Conally. He looked across the water at
Aphrodite
, at the churning white water washing the bow. Through the open hatch sounded the light, quick footsteps of Snow as he mounted the ladder from the engine room. Snow appeared on deck, tapped Wysczknowski. "Relieve me on the board."

Wysczknowski moved, light and shadow, disappearing through the hatch like a man swallowed, gulped beneath a surface of steel.

"Boat crew," Dane bawled. "Get crackin'." He swung from the wing and stormed toward the boat deck.

Snow tapped Fallon. "Let us have a submersible and an engine to the boat deck."

"This is nuts," said Howard.

"Naw. Sea's high, but there ain't no wind, much." Conally hesitated, and it was certain that Conally did not know whether he spoke the truth or not. "Do me a favor. Get over there and fend off. Don't leave it to some other guy."

Fallon turned to Masters and McClean. "You heard the man."

"I heard," said Masters. "It's Jensen all over again."

McClean stepped forward, stepped back, finally got himself moving. "Lord, sweet Jesus. This one here's a pickle. This one here's a cob."

Masters stood and watched him go.

"You want a busted head," said Fallon.

"That's how this ship gets run. Always bustin' somebody." Masters moved, just fast enough that he could not exactly be criticized.

The redheaded Rodgers and bosun striker Joyce stood beside the small boat like convicts about to be hanged. Dane worked on the boat, stripping the cover, and Conally, arriving, stripped the stays. "Take the deck," he hollered at Joyce. "We're taking along some snipes."

Snow tapped Rodgers. "You stay aboard also, lad. The black gang must earn its living."

Fallon stepped forward.

"You are presently the senior engineer," Snow told him. "Stand down."

Fallon mumbled, looked relieved, looked guilty. Glass tumbled into the boat. Fallon turned to see McClean and Masters struggling forward with the gear. The boat was ready, and Dane, Conally and Glass sat hunched, hands steadying against the falls. Snow turned to Joyce. He pointed at McClean and Masters. "Which man is the better oar?"

Bosun striker Joyce blinked, nearly cringed. It was the first time his professional judgment had ever been consulted.

"They ain't neither of them amounts to a seaman, but I never saw Masters catch a crab."

"Nor ever will," said Masters. "Especially not tonight." He stood above Snow, edging sideways and managing to cringe from Dane at the same time. He half raised his hands in either protest or defense. "It's Jensen," he said, helpless, a near whine. "Jensen."

"I have no time to deal with you."

"I'll go." Brace stepped toward the boat, and he did not step timidly. He turned to face Snow. "I've got nothing going for me aboard this pig iron, anyway. Have I?" He swung back, climbed into the boat. "Get the gear up here." He leaned forward to hoist the pump, then the engine. "Later," he told Masters. "Your boot down your throat."

"If you girls is done gossiping," said Dane, and he began roaring. If Dane spoke words, no one understood them in an exact way, but in a general way they could have been understood as far off as Boston. Men tended lines. The boat lowered as Howard ran to the main deck and fended off. As the boat reached the rail, Snow spoke mildly to Dane, as though they were not about to set down on swells that ran towering above the bridge.

Adrian
climbed the seas, rode the tops of swells, and then dropped with alarming speed into the troughs. The small boat hung like a white shiver of Joyce's fear as he took charge of the deck. To lower the boat at the bottom of the trough would splash it, rising faster than the ship. To lower at the top would allow the ship to run faster than the boat. Either maneuver could haul it beneath the swell, or throw it upward crashing into the davits. Joyce waited for the front side of a swell.

"Now."

"Unhooked forward."

"Unhooked aft."