Dust on the Sea (4 page)

“Take a good look aft, Buck,” said Richardson, putting his own binoculars back to his eyes.

“I don't see anything, Captain—nothing, really—the horizon does look a bit strange out there, though. . . .”

“That's not the horizon, Buck. It's a lot closer than that!”

“But it is too the horizon! There's nothing beyond it!”

“No, Buck. It's the top of a big wave. It'll be breaking here in a couple of minutes!” Richardson's voice held a calmness that surprised even himself.

Williams stared at him. “I don't get it, sir,” he said.

“Once in a while this happens in what they call Kona weather, Buck. A big wave sweeps in from the sea, and unless you're ready for it, it can do a lot of damage. There must have been a couple already today. That's why there was no minesweeper in the channel. We're going to be pooped in a minute. Better be ready to hang on. . . .”

“Should we send for a line to lash us to the bridge?”

“That would have been a good idea if Pearl had thought to warn us about this, but I don't think we'll have that much time now. Matter of fact, here it comes!” Mesmerized, the two officers stared aft.

Suddenly Richardson reached behind Williams, pressed the bridge speaker button. “Conning tower! Keith! You have the conn! Keep us on course through the periscope!”

“Conn, aye aye!” said the speaker in Keith Leone's unmistakable voice. “The 'scope is up! What's going on?”

“Kona wave about to poop us, Keith. We may not be much good up here. You've got to keep us in the channel!”

“I will keep us in the channel. I have the conn! Should we shut the main induction, Bridge?”

The question was an eminently logical one. Judging from the sudden precautions taken on the bridge, it was evident that massive flooding was expected from the pooping wave. While the main induction valve, thirty-six inches in diameter, and its associated piping were as well protected from the sea as could be arranged, the four big ten-cylinder diesel engines running in
Eel
's two enginerooms sucked an enormous quantity of air into the ship. Were the induction valve to be submerged, water instead of air would be sucked in and flood the engineering spaces. Prolonged flooding—for several seconds—might even endanger the ship, not to mention much delicate electrical machinery. By shutting the induction valve, Keith also inferred the obvious shift to battery propulsion, which, of course, required no air.

“Affirmative, Keith!” Richardson responded. “Here comes the wave!”

In the space of less than a minute since Richardson had triggered the first alarm,
Eel
had traveled approximately one-quarter of the distance between the sea buoy and the main channel entrance buoys. Now it looked as though she were crossing a narrow, shallow valley of water. Ahead, on the far edge of the trough, watched the Pearl Harbor channel entrance buoys. It was mandatory to pass between them, for they lay on either side of the dredged and blasted passage into the harbor. Astern, what Buck Williams had thought was the horizon was now clearly the crest of a large wave, racing toward land. Already it was drawing water from the area ahead of it, creating a depression in the water level through which the submarine was passing, and adding to its own crest at the same time.

“Rich!” called Williams. “It was nice knowing you!” The comment was made in a jocular tone, but it was the first time Richardson had ever heard one of his juniors use his nickname. Buck Williams would be a damned good submarine skipper someday, if somebody didn't cashier him first for irreverence in the face of danger.

The two men braced themselves in opposite corners of the bridge. Astern, the wave had crested, foaming at the top, formed into the shape of a huge breaker. Moving shoreward at a speed far greater than that of the submarine, it began to lift her.
Eel
's stern rose. Her bow depressed, until water was within a foot or two of flowing over her
slatted main deck forward. But the wave rose much too rapidly for
Eel
's stern to follow, and the huge breaker began to submerge the submarine's after parts. Still it came on, curling higher, standing on the main deck nearly as high as the tops of the periscope supports.

Richardson had heard no orders given to shut the induction, but the thump of the valve beneath the bridge deck, as the hydraulic mechanism closed it, could be mistaken for nothing else. Keith had shifted to the battery. Except for the hatch on the bridge, the submarine was as tight as she could be.

“Buck! Get below!”

“I'm staying with you!” shouted Williams. To confirm his determination he leaned under the bridge overhang, shouted to Oregon, whose worried face could be seen framed in the bridge hatch. “Shut the hatch!”

The bridge hatch slammed shut. The wheel on its top twirled to the shut position as Oregon spun it from underneath. Williams and Richardson were now isolated on the submarine's bridge. The breaking sea, curling in mighty splendor, stood on the
Eel
's main deck. The wave's forward progress slowed as it gathered strength from the shallow water it had scooped up into its corporeal self. Its forward face became steeper—“A wonderful surfboard comber if one dared to ride it!” thought Richardson. The wave touched the after end of the cigarette deck, bellied up from beneath, leaned forward even more. It foamed at the top, became suddenly concave, with a million lines of curved vertical ribbing, and broke.

“Hang on!” shouted Richardson, and as he did so he heard Williams shout the identical words to him. Both men gripped the bridge railing and took a deep breath.

Afterward, Richardson would recall an impression that, though there was no noticeable temperature to the sea, he suddenly found himself standing in water to his waist and for a second looked straight up inside the hollow of the breaker. He saw its crest strike the top of the periscope shears, adding yet more spray to its descending, broken, frontal edge. Then he was engulfed in roaring water. There was a sensation of color, of white mixed with streaked lightning, and of pressure. His feet were no longer securely on the deck. He was weightless, buffeted. His hands strained to hold the rails, were swept free. Something hit him on the back of his head; whether he blacked out for a moment he never knew, but his next recollection was a sudden awareness of the solid structure of the bulletproof front plating of the bridge pressing against his back, the slatted wooden deck driving upward against his thigh and buttocks.

Water, draining freely between the slats, held him immovably in place. He could see its shiny surface above him, exactly as it looked so often through the periscope when a sea rolled over its eyepiece—except that this time it was tilted at a crazy angle. Then his head broke through, and in a moment he could move and pull himself upright. Surprisingly, he had felt no need for air. Perhaps there had not been enough time.

A wet, disheveled Buck Williams was still gripping the bridge rail where he had been before the wave struck. The ship was heeled far over to port; Richardson, on the port side, had gone farther under than Williams. The bridge speaker was blaring something. It sounded choked and garbled, because water was still draining from its perforated bottom, but it was unmistakably Keith's voice.

“Bridge! We're way off course! Are you all right?” With the ship already knocked off her ordered heading, if anyone had been swept overboard the thing to do was to continue the unexpected turn and go after him directly. Doubtless Keith would have someone on the other periscope helping him look for people in the water—yes, both 'scopes were up, describing great arcs across the cloudy sky as
Eel
rolled in the aftermath of the huge sea—but of course it was not possible to depress the periscope optics sufficiently to see what had happened on the bridge directly beneath them.

Richardson made as if to reach for the speaker button. The quick-thinking Williams, nearer to it, pressed it for him. “Keith! This is Rich!”—unconsciously he also used his nickname—“We're both okay up here. Carry on!”

“Conn, aye! That comber rolled us over thirty degrees and took us forty-five degrees off course! We're coming back to channel heading now!” Keith sounded relieved, despite the distortions of the speaker.

Several hundred yards ahead, broad on the port bow, the entrance buoys danced as the breaker hit them. Strangely, they seemed no closer than they had been before the pooping sea, though they had then been dead ahead, with the submarine making quite respectable speed. As Rich watched, the two buoys steadily swam to the right, settled down a few degrees on the starboard bow. Keith was compensating for the distance
Eel
had been pushed off track, obviously planning to get the ship centered in the channel and on the right course before passing between the buoys.

“That looks like the only wave, Skipper!” said Williams. “I sure wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it!”

“Me, too, Buck. That was the biggest comber I've ever seen, or heard about, either!” Richardson paused. “After we get secured let's
look up this Kona business. I've seen it before. But never this rough!”

Both officers had been shaking their binoculars dry, now put them to their eyes and began looking steadily aft. “Well,” said Richardson, “that was it, I guess. Only one wave, but that one nearly creamed us.”

“Open the hatch, Captain?”

“Negative, not for a couple minutes.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The conversation, clipped and monosyllabic, carried out with binoculars against their eyes, had shifted to officialese. A full thirty seconds of silence ensued, each man absorbed in his own search of the water and horizon astern.

“Bridge! . . . Conn! We're steady on base course, about to pass the entrance buoys!”

Buck glanced at his skipper, caught his imperceptible nod, pressed the bridge speaker button. By mutual understanding of the watch officers, merely pressing the button—which allowed a certain amount of feedback to enter the ship's speaker system for a moment—had become accepted for a routine acknowledgment, making unnecessary the additional distraction of words. In a silence that was almost eerie, for
Eel
was still on battery power and the customary mutter of the diesel engine exhausts was absent, the sub moved ahead. The two buoys, the red conical one to starboard and the black can-shaped one to port, swam alongside. Only a moment ago they had seemed quite close together, thought Richardson, and now they seemed far apart. He was totally oblivious to the fact that he had made this identical observation at least a dozen times before.

“Skipper . . .” Buck again, in a conversational tone. “Why didn't you clear the bridge entirely when we saw the wave coming? There was time for both of us to get below, I'm sure.” He still held the binoculars to his eyes while talking.

Richardson put his own glasses down, let them hang on their strap around his neck. “There probably was enough time, Buck,” he said, “but of course I didn't have any idea how big that wave would be. We were in a narrow channel. Entering port, the skipper is supposed to stay on the bridge. But why didn't you obey me when I told you to go?” He was not being entirely frank; he'd been thinking that perhaps the wave had been meant for him, that it might bring peace for all time.

And then he wished he had not asked his own question of Williams, for there was a hint of hesitation as that normally self-possessed young man answered, too smoothly, “I just figured that since I had the deck, I'd better stay up too.” Williams' binoculars remained against his eyes as he spoke, and he was inspecting the shore to starboard.

“Bridge! . . . Conn! Permission to open the main induction and answer bells on the engines!”

Richardson was grateful for the distraction from a conversation which had taken an uncomfortable turn. “Conn! . . . Bridge!” He held down the speaker button, bellowed into it, supporting himself with the ruined Target Bearing Transmitter. “Open the induction! Answer bells on three engines! Open the bridge hatch! Lookouts to the bridge!”

The clank of the induction valve, immediately below the after part of the bridge deck, was his answer, even before Keith made the customary acknowledgment. Then came the familiar clatter of the engines rolling on air, and the hearty power roar, accompanied by sprays of water from the mufflers, when the diesel fuel was cut in. The handwheel in the center of the hatch spun; it banged open: crash of heavy steel against lighter steel. Four lookouts, followed by Lasche and Oregon, dashed by him and to their stations. Last up was Keith.

“I still have the conn, Captain,” he said. “Request permission to turn over to the regular OOD”—with a glance at the drenched suit of what had only a few minutes earlier been inspection khakis—“if he's ready.”

“It's up to Buck,” began Richardson, but Williams beat him to it, spoke at the same instant. “I'm ready to relieve you,” he said to Keith.

As the traditional ritual of turning over the duties of Officer of the Deck took place—truncated in this instance because of the short time Keith had held the conn—Richardson raised his binoculars and surveyed the channel. So far as he could see,
Eel
was the only ship in it. The entrance buoys were now astern. Ahead two more red and black buoys were in sight, similar to but smaller than the first pair. The visibility held a hint of haze, and he could barely make out the third pair.
Eel
was still proceeding through open water, but ahead the shoreline closed in except for a patch of water in the middle toward which she was steering. Unseen in the distance and the haze, the otherwise straight channel made a couple of small bends between banks of hibiscus-laden shore, and to starboard around one of them would be Hospital Point, with usually some convalescing patients and a few nurses watching the ships pass in and out. No doubt there would be a crowd of people today, curious to see what the Kona weather might do to the outlying reaches of the channel and to any ships caught in it. They would have noticed the absence of the usual sweepers and patrol craft, the lack of other ships going in or out (Keith had commented on this after things had returned to normal). From her appearance they would know
Eel
was returning from patrol, and they would guess the significance of the display of Japanese flags flying from the radar mast. They would probably wave a greeting as the ship rounded the
point. Perhaps, with their own injuries, with
Arizona
's flag still raised every morning over the 1100 men still aboard the silent, shattered hulk, they would be pleased if they could know that this particular submarine had deliberately run down three lifeboats filled with enemy sailors.