Voyage to Somewhere (5 page)

“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

L
EAVING 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 space 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 passed 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 passageway 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 bastards!” he was shouting. “Get mad, damn 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 bitch, 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 God damn ocean,” he was saying. “The God damn 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 passageway between a raised hatch cover and the bulwark that was too narrow for it to pass. It brought up against the entrance to this passageway, 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 cocky. 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

T
HE 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 scraps 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.