Pacific Interlude (16 page)

“Captain, the ship is ready to sail,” Simpson was saying, “except Mr. Wydanski ain't aboard. Shall I send one of the boys up to look for him? Some of them know where he's been staying—”

“Give him a few minutes,” Syl said. “He'll show up.”

He had hardly finished speaking when a taxi rolled into the yard; Wydanski jumped out and ran toward the ship, holding his cap on his head. His face looked pale and drawn as he jumped aboard, but his voice was firm when he said, “Sorry to be late, skipper. The engine room is ready to go.”

“Very well,” Syl said. “Are all hands aboard now, Mr. Simpson?”

“All present and accounted for.”

“So let's go. Pipe the men to mooring stations. Put the engine room on standby. It's time to move her on out.”

Syl found he felt good as he stood on the wing of the bridge, rapping out the familiar orders and hearing the men echo them.

“Take in number one.”

“We're taking in number one, sir!”

“Take in number four.”

“Number four is coming in!”

“Number three now.”

“Number three, sir!”

Yard workers trotted from one piling to another on the wharf, casting off the heavy lines. The crew made a game of snaking them in so fast that they never got wet.

“Mind your helm now,” Syl said. “Right full rudder.”

“The rudder is right full, sir,” the helmsman said, spinning the old-fashioned spoked wheel.

“Ahead slow.”

“Ahead slow, sir,” the quartermaster echoed, and there was the jingle of the engine-room telegraph. “The engine is ahead slow, sir.”

“Very well.”

Syl leaned over the wing of the bridge and spit into the water, observing that a slight tidal current was pushing him against the dock, but this time there was little wind here. The ship nudged her bow closer to the wharf and the stern swung out, but not enough.

“Ahead half,” Syl said.

“Ahead half, sir. The engine is ahead half.”

The old Diesel increased its beat. The high stern slowly moved away from the wharf.

Stick your ass out in the stream, Old Girl, and move it, move it on out, Syl thought with a rare flash of affection for this ungainly ship. Aloud he called, “Stop the engine. Rudder amidships. Back slow. Take in Number Two.”

As the orders were repeated Syl stood watching the bow. The current was shoving it dangerously close to the wharf, almost grazing it, but now it was clear. The last mooring line splashed into the water—this one they didn't keep from getting wet, but they brought it in before it could get into the screw.

“Back half,” Syl said. “Give three blasts on the whistle.”

The air horn did not give a satisfyingly dramatic sound, though it was loud, like blasts from a large truck. The workmen ashore turned without a wave and trudged on to other work. The gap of muddy harbor water between the ship and the wharf widened fast.

Last voyage?

These words flashed quickly into Syl's mind, and he as quickly erased them.

“Stop the engine,” he said. “Ahead slow. Helmsman, head for the end of that breakwater out there. Mr. Simpson, bring me the harbor chart.”

He had already studied the harbor chart and had only to glance at it as he conned the ship through the channels to the outer harbor.

“Sir, can the men secure from mooring stations?” Simpson asked.

“Yeah, but they won't have time for more than a cup of coffee. In fifteen minutes we'll be coming alongside the big tanker to take cargo.”

“Aye, aye, sir. May I warn all hands that we'll want spark-free conditions in fifteen minutes?”

“Very well. And have someone bring me a cup of coffee up here, Mr. Simpson.”

It was a nice morning, Syl thought as he sat on a stool on the wing of the bridge, sipping the hot sweet coffee. Here in the outer harbor, a brisk wind was piping up, and the American flag on the gaff of the signal mast stood out stiffly against the azure, almost cloudless sky. The green paint on the decks made the little tanker gleam like new in the bright sunlight. Seagulls wheeled around the wake, diving on scraps of breakfast which the cook was throwing out.

“Mr. Simpson, have you got a Baker flag ready to break out when we come alongside the big tanker?” Syl asked.

“Yes, sir. Sorrel has already bent it onto the halyard.”

“What's that all about?” Buller asked. He had been sitting with unaccustomed silence in the pilothouse, apparently studying the procedures for maneuvering the ship.

“Baker, Mr. Buller, is a red flag,” Syl said. “It means, ‘Danger, I am carrying an explosive cargo.'”

“We better nail that damn thing to our mast,” Buller said.

“We'll fly it only in harbors. There's no use identifying ourselves as a prime target.”

“Hell, what do you think the Japs will figure we're carrying, beer?” Buller said. “Come to think of it, that would be a fairly explosive cargo.”

And then, back in character, he farted loudly.

The merchant tanker, the
American Exporter
, was a twenty-thousand tonner which dwarfed the
Y-18
. As he neared her Syl called the men back to mooring stations. Sorrel, the eighteen-year-old signalman who looked like a blonde California beachboy, flashed his light and reported, “He wants us to come along his starboard side, sir.”

“Very well. Mr. Simpson, have fenders rigged on our port side.”

This looked like an easy enough maneuver. Both ships were heading into the wind, and it was necessary only to approach slowly at a good angle. But Syl soon discovered that the
Y-18
did not handle well at low speeds. When they were almost close enough to heave a line, a gust of wind hit her high bow and shoved it directly toward the belly of the high tanker.

“Right full rudder!” Syl said.

“The rudder is right full, sir,” the helmsman said, stopping to spin the wheel fast. A moment later he added, “She is not answering the helm, sir. We've lost steerageway.”

The
Y-18
was still moving fast enough to cause one hell of a crash if she hit. The bow was only about twenty feet from the barnlike side of the merchant vessel now and was inexorably creeping closer. Syl had an immediate decision to make. He could give her a burst of speed ahead to try to turn her or he could back her down. If the first ploy failed he'd hit hard. If the second choice failed, if the reverse could not stop her in time, he could still mush in with enough force to drive his bow right through the thin plates of the
American Exporter
, releasing a Niagara Falls of gas …

“Back slow, back full, back emergency flank!”

The engine-room telegraph jingled frantically.

“The engine is backing emergency flank,” the quartermaster said with studied casualness.

His decision made, there was nothing Syl could do but watch. The bow of the
Y-18
thrust forward, narrowing the gap until it looked as though the man on the bow could touch the larger vessel. The crew of the merchantmen came running with fenders. The engine of the
Y-18
raced, sending up clouds of black smoke. Syl braced himself for the impact, but before it came the
Y-18
seemed to shudder in anticipation, stopped, and slowly pulled back.

“Jesus Christ.” Buller's contribution.

“God,” Simpson said, and stood with his head bowed.

During the emergency Syl had been aware of neither of them. Now his face and shirt were wet with sweat and his knees felt weak.

“Back slow,” he said. “I'll take her around and try it again.”

“Captain, Mr. Wydanski is on the tube,” the quartermaster said. “He wants to know if the emergency is over.”

“Tell him yes.”

Guilt now rose in Syl's throat, like sour bile. He had almost caused a collision and probably an explosion that could have blown up the whole harbor less than an hour after getting underway.

“Stop the engine,” he said.

What had he done wrong? He had simply been too cautious, he had approached so slowly that he had lost steerageway, and he hadn't realized how fast the wind could pivot that high bow. Next time he'd have to come in faster and count on his reverse to stop him when he got close alongside. Maintain steerageway at all costs. That way he could turn out if something went wrong and come back again. At least his instincts had saved him. He never could have turned her in time and the reverse, after all, had been powerful enough to stop her.

“Sorry about that, boys,” he said. “I guess I judged that one a little too fine. This time it will be easy. No sweat.” Sure …

That prediction actually turned out to hold true. With a little more water flowing by her rudder, the tanker nestled alongside the big merchantman like a baby ready to nurse.

CHAPTER 11

“P
UT OUT ALL
lines,” Syl said. “Hoist the Baker flag. Observe spark-free conditions. Rig the cargo hose. Take over, Mr. Simpson. If anybody wants me, I'll be in my cabin.”

Lying down on his bunk, he found he needed a drink, wanted a smoke, and of course could have neither. Getting to his feet, he washed his face in cold water, took off his shirt, sponged off his chest with a towel and put on a fresh shirt. As he was combing his hair there was a knock at the cabin door. He expected Simpson or Buller with snide comments but it was a small bald merchantman, the mate of the
American Exporter
. Probably he wanted to tell him how angry the tanker men were for the narrow escape, or even to make a formal complaint.

“Captain, I just brought your invoices over,” the mate said.

“Invoices?”

“We're giving you two hundred and twenty thousand gallons of high octane, about five thousand barrels. After we get you loaded, we'd like to have you test it and mark it OK on our copy of the invoice.”

“Test it?”

“We don't like to be picky about it, but there's been a lot of trouble lately. Some of these little tankers have dirty tanks, or they unload half the high octane and fill up with the low. A lot of planes have crashed and they always try to trace it back to us, so now we keep records.”

“I see.” Make sure someone else gets the blame.

“I know a lot of these little ships don't have the gear for real testing, but you can just write down that the gas we gave you was a proper green. You can test it in a jar.”

“Okay,” Syl said, and accepted the papers.

When the mate left, Syl sank down in the desk chair. Nothing had been said about the near collision. Maybe the mate had figured that Syl had simply calculated the movements of his vessel with rare precision, or maybe he had not thought about the incident at all. People on tankers probably get too used to trouble to react much. He wondered if he'd ever get that way …

Leaning back in his chair, Syl stretched his arms. One good thing that he could say about being scared half to death was that it didn't leave much time for acting out. When the sweat came cold to his face and his knees shook, that—take it or leave it—was the real Sylvester M. Grant, the inner man finally revealed.

Couldn't leave him there for long, though. Put him back in the bottle before
he
scared everyone to death.

It took about three hours for the big tanker to fill the little one. As her tanks were flooded with gasoline the
Y-18
settled so low in the water that some of the men who had never served aboard such vessels thought she was sinking.

Simpson continued to tell his horror stories … “Skipper, you want to learn this valve system damn well. If you turn the wrong valves, you can fill just the tanks on one side and capsize a ship like this. That happened only a couple of months ago at—”

“I get the picture,” Syl said. “Naturally, Mr. Simpson, we're going to try to distribute the cargo evenly, just like on a freighter.”

“You want to fill all the tanks right to the top so there's no air there,” Simpson pressed on. “That's not like a freighter. We float only because gas is lighter than water.”

“I guess that's as good a reason as any,” Syl said. “I don't give a damn why we float, just so long as we do.”

The gasoline made a deep gurgling sound in the bowels of the ship as it poured into the tanks. She sounded like a great beast with stomach trouble. Vapors pouring from the vents at the masthead were invisible but dense enough to make shadows like writhing snakes on the deck below. The smell of gasoline was everywhere. Perhaps it did have an intoxicating effect. The men seemed a little silly as they joked about the girls they'd known in Brisbane, the quantities of booze they'd drunk, and the fights …

Finally the tank deck sank to a level about two feet above the water. Just the bow and stern were high enough to ward off seas. In a blow the whole waist of the ship would be awash, like a beach at high tide.

“Hell, tankers like this have survived voyages all over the world ever since gas was invented,” Syl said when Simpson intoned he'd often seen waves smash right over the tank deck.

“Not quite like this one, skipper. This was really designed to be a harbor tanker. When she was in the merchant marine she wasn't even licensed for anything but sheltered and semi-sheltered waters. That's why our radio equipment is so bad—”

“Mr. Simpson, why do you stay on this ship if you hate her so much?”

“Hate her? I don't hate her. I just know her limitations. You have to face them if you're going to cope with them.”

At this moment, and for a change, Buller's bullishness was welcome if unrealistic.

“Hell, this little ship could ride through anything,” he said. “Waves break over a corked bottle, but it won't sink.”

“Corked bottles don't break up,” Simpson said. “They don't provide any resistance to the waves. Our topsides are like a barn wall.”

“I've never known a barn to be sunk yet,” Syl said. “When will our tanks be topped off, Mr. Simpson?”