Voyage To Somewhere Part 3

"Yes, Chief. Secure the deck for sea."

The narrow strip of water that separated the ship from the land was widening. Already it was as wide as a river.

Slowly we threaded our way out of San Pedro harbor. Mr. King stood in the port wing conning the ship, and I sat on a stool in the starboard wing full of the luxury of for a little while letting someone else do the worrying. The pilot boat, a small launch with an enormous "Prep" flag flying from the bow, followed us. We wound our way down the crowded channel and pa.s.sed through the mouth of the harbor. Mr. King stopped the ship and blew a long blast on the whistle. As the pilot boat came alongside we stood chatting by the rail.

"Good luck," he said. He stood looking out to sea. The horizon was misty and indeterminate, and because it made no sharp line to limit s.p.a.ce, the extent of the ocean seemed infinite.

"You go that way," he said, waved in the general direction of the Hawaiian Islands, grinned, and climbed over the side into his boat. The c.o.xswain of the boat raced his engine, and the boat veered away. We were alone.

We set the four to eight watch. Mr. Warren was officer of the deck, and I sat on my stool on the starboard side of the bridge. White, the seaman who had asked me about sending the telegram, came up and relieved Boats on the wheel. Immediately the ship began weaving back and forth across her course. Each time she swung she swung wider, until finally we were tacking like a sailing vessel. Mr. Warren went over and gave what instructions he could to White. The boy stood there with the sweat pouring from his face and worked the wheel from one side to the other. I walked over and looked at the chart. Catalina Island lay on our port bow, and we were to pa.s.s by St. Nicholas Island too. In a few hours it would be dark, and with the men steering the way poor White was, I would have no idea where we were.

"You better get Boats again," I said to Mr. Warren, "and the quartermaster. Have them stand your wheel watches until we get clear of the land."

Boats was called, and appeared grinning upon the bridge. White gave him the wheel and walked disconsolately to the companionway.

"Don't you worry," I heard Mr. Warren say to him. "You'll learn. It'll just take a little time."

As the ship pa.s.sed Catalina Island she began to feel the motion of the sea. Almost imperceptibly at first she began to roll. It was getting dark, and a fresh wind was just beginning to whisper in the rigging. After we had rounded Catalina Island and were on our new course, I went down to my cabin to lie down. I had been on my feet so long that my bunk felt good to me. Drowsily I lay there and listened to the creaking of the ship, the still restrained sound of the wind, and the steady caressing of the water against the hull. Without wishing to, I slept.

I awoke in the dark. The first thing of which I was conscious was that the ship was rolling heavily. "We must be about abeam of St. Nicholas Island," I thought, and hurried to the bridge. A glance at the clock showed me that it was five minutes after ten, just fifteen minutes before it was time to change course. In the dull light of the binnacle I could see Boats towering above the wheel.

"Tired, Boats?" I said. "You've been at it quite a while. We're clear of the land now, and we'll have you relieved."

"Everything's going fine, sir," he said, but nodded at the starboard wing of the bridge. "You better have a look at Mr. Crane."

I walked out on the wing of the bridge. The wind was blowing hard, and for a moment I stood in the darkness a little confused. Then I saw a form huddled on the stool in the corner and heard the sound of someone retching. It was Mr. Crane and he was seasick. I waited till he straightened up.

"About time to change course?" I asked.

"Yes. I was just about to call you."

"Well, I think you can have Boats relieved now. Unless they double back on the course there's not much they can hit."

"Yes, sir. The messenger and the quartermaster were sick and I sent them below. I'll call up the forecastle for them."

I hesitated, and then said, "Better let them stand their watches. They've got to get used to it sometime."

Mr. Crane gave me a glance that I saw held little sympathy for my convictions, but he telephoned the forecastle and told two of the seamen and the gunner's mate who was to be the quartermaster of the watch to come up. Then he went out to the wing of the bridge and was sick again.

A moment later two very pale seamen appeared on the bridge, followed by the gunner's mate. Guns was a fine-looking man, about twenty-six years old, tall and powerful looking. He came armed with a bucket. Arriving on the bridge, he set the bucket down, and was immediately sick into it. One of the seamen relieved Boats at the wheel. He hung onto the wheel as though to support himself upon it. In the baleful light of the binnacle I could see him swallowing hard. Guns sympathetically shoved the bucket toward him and he gratefully leaned toward it.

"Can you lash it near here?" he asked.

Boats took a piece of marline from his pocket and lashed the bucket to the base of the engine-room telegraph. The seaman seemed relieved. The ship swung wildly from her course. I peered into the binnacle and shuddered, but, I reflected, it didn't really matter. In the morning we could find our position.

At ten-twenty we, nominally at least, changed course and headed directly for Honolulu. I stood on the wing of the bridge and stared ahead into the blackness of the night. The ship was rolling about twenty-five degrees, and the wind, though it was blowing a good thirty knots, was steady and did not appear to be making up into a storm. Overhead a few stars showed themselves occasionally from behind the clouds. The bridge was quiet until one of the men was sick. Each time one was sick he started off the others, and for a moment they retched in chorus-then silence again.

Moving another stool from the chart room to the wing of the bridge, I decided to keep a lookout there until the next watch came on deck. "Just as long as we don't get a real blow now," I thought, "we'll be all right." The question of what would happen if we ran into any enemy action entered my mind, and I brushed it away.

At quarter to twelve the chief boatswain's mate came up to relieve Mr. Crane, and I saw with relief that he was not seasick. One by one others came up to take the places of the helmsman, the messenger, and the quartermaster, but they were in very little better condition than the men they relieved.

The bucket stayed where it was. The Chief settled down on his stool in the wing of the bridge and seemed alert enough to be left alone. From time to time he took soda crackers from his pocket and tried to press them on the sick helmsman.

"Best thing in the world," he kept saying. "All you have to do is keep eating."

Finding his efforts went unappreciated, he gave up and sat alone staring ahead and munching his crackers.

"You go ahead below, sir," he said to me. "I'll keep this sanitarium going right along like a ship."

Going below, I knocked at the door of Mr. Rudd's stateroom. Getting no answer, I looked in, saw his bunk unruffled, and went to the door that led down to the engine room. As soon as I opened it the increased beat of the machinery deafened me for a moment, and a blast of heat brushed my face. I started down the steel companionway and stopped on the middle step. Below me I saw a machinist's mate stretched full length on his back, and as I looked at him his head lolled over and he was sick. The pounding of the engines mercifully drowned out the sound. I descended the rest of the way and saw another seaman hanging onto the stanchion upon which was the engine-room telegraph. He was hanging on in such a way that he looked as though he had been trussed up by the wrists, and as the ship rolled his body swayed. Standing forward of these men between the two engines was Mr. Rudd. He was stripped to the waist, and his great belly gleamed with sweat. In his mouth was a huge unlit cigar. When he saw me he waved cheerily.

"How are things on deck?" he called above the din of the engines.

"Dandy," I said.

Mr. Rudd leaned over and examined a gauge on the starboard engine. "Everything's all right down here," he said. "All hands are present and accounted for."

He straightened up and wiped his face with a piece of waste he took from his hip pocket. Walking over to the prostrate machinist's mate, he nudged him with his toe.

"Hey, get up and clean up your mess," he said. "That is the first duty toward your country. Come on, my boy, up!"

Taking more waste from his pocket, he leaned over and helped the machinist's mate with his task. The boy collapsed again on deck. Mr. Rudd took a fresh handkerchief from his pocket, walked over to a faucet, wet the handkerchief, and placed it with a strangely tender motion on the machinist's mate's forehead. Then he turned back to his engines and after regulating a valve he turned once more to me.

"How many days do you figure it'll take to get to Honolulu?"

"About twelve days, I guess, if the boys can learn to steer a course."

Mr. Rudd turned to the sick machinist's mate. "Think of that, boys! In peacetime you'd be paying ten dollars a day for a trip like this!"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

LEAVING MR. RUDD, I went into my cabin to get a few hours' sleep before it was time for my dawn star sights. How long I slept I don't know, but I was brought to my feet by the sound of a shuddering crash. My first thought was that we had piled into a reef, but the sure knowledge that no reef was near made me reject this. Next I thought of a collision, but a long sliding sound and another sickening crash that carried with it the sound of tearing metal, followed by still another sliding sound, made me abandon that idea. While I was thinking all of these things I was running fast as I could to the bridge.

"It's the drum of steel cable, sir," the Chief told me. "It's burst its lashings and taken charge!"

His words were drowned out by a terrific crash from the well deck.

"Turn her into the wind," I yelled, "and slow her down. We've got to cut this roll!"

Ignoring the need for a blackout, I flicked on the deck floodlights. Rushing to the wing of the bridge, I looked below me to a scene of complete confusion. The well deck was an open s.p.a.ce of steel about eighty feet long and thirty-five feet wide. By the floodlights it was as brilliantly illuminated as an arena. Charging from side to side of this deck with the motion of the ship was the two-ton drum of steel cable. Each time it brought up against the bulwark that formed a low rail around the ship, there was a sickening crash. Following this crash, as if for a moment satisfied, the drum stayed still while the ship rolled back to center again, and then, as the ship rolled over in the opposite direction, it gathered momentum very slowly and skittered across the deck into the other side. As the ship rounded into the wind her roll became confused and she started to pitch. The drum, feeling this change, zigzagged wildly about the deck, caroming off hatch edges and bulkheads like a giant billiard ball on a crazily tilting biliard table. The drum had been loose, I judged, about two minutes; it still trailed the frayed ends of its broken lashings. Already there lay behind it the wreckage of broken ventilator funnels, and everywhere it had hit a bulkhead there was a shallow cave pressed into the metal. As I watched, the door that led from the forecastle to the forward end of the well deck opened, and I saw the huge form and gray head of Boats framed within it.

The drum, as though it saw him too, lunged forward with the downward pitch of the ship and for a moment I thought it was going to hurtle through the open door over Boats into the crowded forecastle. The door was raised about a foot above deck, however, and the drum collided with the bulkhead under it, skidded sideways, and bodily tore the open steel door from its hinges. Its motion was accompanied by the screeching sound of sliding metal, and I realized that the reason for the speed of the drum was that it was resting on the heads of several round bolts that projected from the bottom of it. Boats involuntarily shrank back as the drum approached him, but as it continued drunkenly on its course and paused momentarily against the side of the ship, he stepped quickly out of the forecastle and motioned four seamen out after him. The men were dressed in blue dungarees, and they were naked to the waist. They spread out around the deck, and kept their eyes riveted to the drum. The ship, now heading into the wind, had taken on a strange corkscrew motion; she did not stop rolling, but she pitched heavily at the same time. The drum slowly gathered headway again and blundered erratically across the deck. White was in its path. He leaped sideways at the last moment, and as the drum pa.s.sed him he suddenly leaned over and retched. Shouting to the Chief to keep the ship into the wind, I raced down on deck myself.

All the time I had been watching, my mind had been working furiously to decide how to capture the drum. My first thought had been to let it slide overboard, but the low bulwark around the edge of the ship was just high enough to stop the drum each time and return it. Because of this, I saw, the drum would not lose itself overboard until it had battered the deck beyond recognition.

When I had first seen White arrive on deck, I had been almost paralyzed with the fear that he would be crushed. The seamen were seasick to the point of physical weakness. "I'll put all the seamen below," I said to myself, "and Boats, the Chief, Mr. Rudd and I will figure this thing out." As I stepped from the pa.s.sageway onto the well deck, I saw the drum moving slowly toward me. In a semicircle behind it stood the men. Before it reached me, the drum inexplicably paused in mid-deck and stayed there teetering a little from side to side. The men all faced it, fascinated. The wind was cold, and they were crouched forward with their naked shoulders contracted. White's thin boyish face was contorted with nausea. While he was sick he did not take his eyes from the drum.

Slowly, as though making up its mind which man to pursue, the drum wavered across the deck, and then with a sudden rush headed toward White again. The boy at first backed up, panic-stricken, but while we shouted he jumped, without a second to lose. The drum collided with the bulwark and carried away a part of the chain rail above it.

"Boats!" I called. "Get these men out of the way and I'll call Mr. Rudd and the Chief!"

Instead of immediately obeying me, Boats made a quick run across the deck and stood beside me.

"Sir!" he said. "Let me and the boys handle this! We can get it all right!"

I was about to tell him that it was no time to stand in the middle of the deck arguing, but he cut in on my thoughts.

"Sir!" he said. "They've got to start sometime!"

"All right, Boats," I said. "Go ahead."

I ran back up on the bridge. The ship had taken on a completely unpredictable motion, and I wanted to turn her just enough off the wind so that her roll would become regular again. The Chief met me on the wing of the bridge, and something about his eyes startled me.

"It's my fault," he said. "I'm the one that lashed it there!"

"Cut it, Chief," I said. "It's my fault too. Bring her about two points off the wind. Bring your rudder right there!"

"I want to go down," the Chief said. "I want to go down and help them."

"You and I will stay here and let Boats handle it, Chief," I said. "We don't want any more men down there than are necessary."

The Chief and I stood on the starboard wing of the bridge and looked down on the brilliantly lit well deck. Mr. Warren and Mr. Crane came and watched with us. As the ship steadied with the wind on her port bow, her roll became timed and one could judge about where the drum was going to go next. As we watched, Boats stepped out to the center of the well deck. He held in his hand the end of a length of two-inch line. Lost in the lethargy of seasickness and fear, the seamen stood huddled behind him.

I heard him shouting against the wind. "Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" he was shouting. "Get mad, d.a.m.n you, get mad!"

As he talked he quickly made the end of the line fast to a bollard on deck.

"Pick up the other end of this line now, pick it up!" he said, and, running the other end of the line under a deck cleat, he placed it into the hands of White. He himself picked up the slack bight and stood holding it waist high.

"When I get this around the b.i.t.c.h, take up the slack!" he ordered, and advanced toward the drum, which at that moment was hesitating on the opposite side of the deck. Judging the roll of the ship just right he held high the middle of the line, and let the drum slide under it.

"Take up the slack, now! Take her in!"

The seamen hauled frantically on the line, and Boats rushed over and helped them take a turn around the cleat. The drum brought up against the bulkhead between the bollard upon which one end of the line was made fast and the cleat, about which the other end of the line was turned. By the time the ship rolled back to center, Boats and the men had tightened the line so that the drum was jammed where it had landed. For one glorious instant it stayed straining against the line, and a triumphant shout went up from the seamen, but before their shout had died in the wind the ship gave a heavy lurch, the line burst under the strain, and the drum careened downward across the deck free as before. The men fell back.

Boats hesitated a moment, then shouted to the men and ran up the steel ladder to the forecastle deck. I thought that he had gone there merely to get them away from the drum, but an instant later they returned dragging an eight-inch mooring line. This line was as big around as a man's leg, and though it was undoubtedly strong enough to hold the drum, it was far too heavy to handle quickly enough to trap the drum as before.

Dashing across the deck while the drum was motionless between rolls, Boats and the men dragged one end of the hawser through the companionway to the stern. Returning with only White, Boats with a running bowline made a huge noose in the end of the line. Holding this noose open, he and White advanced toward the drum. They crouched forward, and as I watched them the whole scene seemed suddenly unreal to me. Standing there with their noose, they were so obviously poised for the capture of some malevolent beast that it didn't appear possible that they were fighting a drum of steel cable.

Beside me I heard the Chief mumbling. "The G.o.d d.a.m.n ocean," he was saying. "The G.o.d d.a.m.n ocean!"

Boats and White waited while the drum made two lunges across the deck; then, while it paused forward against a crushed ventilator funnel, they approached it, threw the noose around it, and withdrew.

"Heave around!" Boats shouted at the top of his lungs. "Heave around, heave around!"

At almost the same instant I heard the grumble of the capstan aft and the heavy hawser tightened. The ship rolled and the drum started its headlong motion sideways, but the hawser held and pulled it relentlessly aft. Still the drum weaved from side to side, crashing against the bulwarks as it went, but as it was hauled toward the stern its scope became shorter and shorter. When it heaved against the line it gave the appearance of a huge metal fish played against a giant mechanical reel.

"Keep heaving, keep heaving. Don't give her slack!" Boats shouted, and the after capstan ground steadily. Slowly the drum approached a pa.s.sageway between a raised hatch cover and the bulwark that was too narrow for it to pa.s.s. It brought up against the entrance to this pa.s.sageway, the line tightened, and it jammed there.

"Avast heaving. Make it fast, make it fast!" Boats shouted, and raced aft. The capstan ceased its grumbling. Boats reappeared with a length of six-inch line, and this he wound many times around the drum and every cleat and bollard near it. At last he straightened up and smiled up at the bridge. After the ceaseless sliding and crashing of the drum, the ship seemed strangely quiet.

"All secure about the deck, sir!" Boats called.

I looked down on the well deck below me. The seamen were grouped around the drum. The drum itself was completely harmless now, and White was sitting upon it. He didn't look scared any more, and he didn't look seasick. He looked c.o.c.ky. I reached up and flicked out the floodlights on deck. The telephone from the engine room rang, and Mr. Rudd asked if everything were all right.

"Yes," I said. "Everything's all right now. Everything's fine."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE NEXT DAY the wind and sea moderated. The morning twilight star sights showed us twenty-eight miles off course, but the men, each of whom by now had stood at least one trick at the wheel, were getting the knack of it, and the ship hewed to the line pretty well. Most of the morning I slept, and when I awoke just before noon I found that the Chief and Mr. Rudd had already repaired most of the damage the drum had done on deck. The steel door to the forcastle had been replaced, the bulkheads had been hammered out, and a fresh coat of paint covered the scars. Our noon sight showed that we were making a good eight knots-only about twice as fast as a man can walk, but a speed which can, if continued steadily, put the miles behind.

As the days went by and the ship settled down into a steady routine, the crew who, when they had come aboard, had seemed to be only a corporate group of men, slowly sorted themselves into individuals and personalities. As they stood their watches and ate and lounged around the deck on their off hours, I heard them talking. Just sc.r.a.ps of conversations came to me, but over a period of time these fitted themselves into a pattern which served as a sort of introduction to each man. The chief boatswain's mate seemed always to be talking about his wife, who was going to have a baby. Once I heard him talking to Boats just outside my cabin.

"Got any children, Boats?" he asked.

"I've got three," I heard Boats' deep voice reply.

"I'm having one myself," the Chief said. "I sort of hoped the wife would have it before I left, but I guess it'll be a couple of days yet. I hope there'll be mail waiting for us in Honolulu."

"There's bound to be," Boats said, and I heard him scratching a match. There was a little silence.

"Say, Boats," the Chief said, "you hear lots about this business of having children. Did your wife have a very hard time of it?"

"No," Boats said, "she had it pretty easy."

"I guess it isn't as bad as they say," the Chief answered. "My wife didn't seem worried about it. The doctor said there was nothing to worry about at all."

They walked away, and a moment later I heard the Chief shouting on deck, "Come on, you deck apes, let's get this mess cleaned up. Where was you brought up, in a barn?"

The quartermaster, a dark, handsome youth whose brooding face sometimes lit up in a surprising smile, talked less than the others. Even when he was off watch he stayed on the bridge poring over the charts and practicing on a small signal light.

"Say, Flags," I heard one of the seamen say to him once, "are you married?"

There was a long pause, and the sound of some books being put away.

"Well, I was," I heard the quartermaster say. "I don't know whether I will be when I get back or not. Me and the wife was having some trouble."