Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 57

Stocker Kane showed up with the Nerka shortly after had taken over the Attack Teacher, and many pleasant hours of visiting with him in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel ensued before he set out for his next patrol. He had loved Australia. was as he imagined America must have been a hundred years ago, he said.

He talked a lot about Hurry, too, and a little, not much, about Laura. "You know how you'll take a liking to someone," said. "Laura and Hurry seemed to hit it off especially well, and they've been corresponding with each other ever since you all left New London. Hurry doesn't think she's happy, though.

She's been trying to get Laura to come out and stay with her in San Francisco, so that she'll be there when they send the Walrus back for overhaul." He chuckled. "She says Jim doesn't write enough. Hurry's always looking around for someone to mother a little, not having any youngsters to keep her busy." The faintest suggestion of a shadow crossed his face.

"Maybe she's working on me, too," I said. I told him of the two letters she had written me.

"She told me she was going to. She thinks you ought to get married, Rich. Leave it to Hurry! She probably thinks you ought to have been the one to marry Laura, instead of Jim."

I managed to smooth my startled look into a grin.

This would be Nerka's sixth patrol, probably Stocker's last for a while. The rotation policy rarely permitted a skipper more than five patrols in succession. But Nerka would most probably be heading for Mare Island or Hunter's Point for a much- needed overhaul after her sixth, and no doubt ComSubPac was willing for Stocker to have the privilege of bringing her back.

Three weeks later I was, of course, on the dock when Walrus came in, having completed her seventh patrol on the way back from Australia. She was something to see as she came bravely around the point of ten-ten dock. From her bullnose to the top of the periscope supports was a perfect clothesline of small Japanese flags, each one representative of a ship she had sunk.

She looked weather-beaten, tired, patches of rust showing here and there, though with no visible damage, but there was no denying a certain elan about her and about the sure manner in which Jim put her alongside the dock.

His fame had preceded him. He had made three patrols in and out of Australia instead of two. His second run had been better than the first, and on his third he had entered an enemy harbor, sunk two ships there and shelled a fortified island, ex- changing fire for half an hour and escaping unscathed. He had sunk a Japanese cruiser near Palau, and he had put three torpedoes into one of the huge Jap battlewagons, a sixty-thousand- ton monster. A Japanese submarine had fired a torpedo at him; personally seeing it first himself, he had swung away to avoid the torpedo track, then fired two torpedoes out of his stern tubes back at the submerged Jap. A great explosion had announced his success, and all sorts of debris had come to the surface by way of proof. With only nine torpedoes left, three forward and six aft, he had engaged in a melee with a six-ship convoy during which he had actually backed into action at one point, and sank three more ships. Finally, with no torpedoes remaining, he had attacked one of the surviving freighters with the four-inch deck gun and every automatic weapon the ship possessed, silencing her defensive battery and sinking her, and still without receiving a scratch in return.

To cap it all, he picked up four prisoners and brought them back with him. The crowd which awaited Walrus was the biggest I had ever seen for any submarine. Jim looked wonderful; bronzed, alert, brimming with self-confidence.

I shook hands with him right after the Admiral and Captain Blunt.

"Hi, Rich!" he said. "How's the leg?" Still holding my hand, he turned to Admiral Small. "Here's the man who's responsible for all I know about submarining, Admiral." He winked at me as the congratulations engulfed him.

Keith also looked tan and fit, as did Hugh, Dave and the rest, though I did not see Jerry Cohen. Leone's grip was hard and firm. "Hi, Captain! Glad to see you back on your feet! Guess I'll be joining you here for a while!"

"You being rotated?"

"Yep! They tried to make me get off in Australia, but I said nix to that. So this is my last trip in the old Walrus. Dave took leave in Brisbane during the sixth run, so now he will finally get his chance at the TDC."

"Good! You rate a rest, after seven runs-where's Jerry Cohen?"

"Oh!" Keith chuckled. "We've been calling him Cobber in- stead of the skipper. He stayed in Australia-liked it better than anybody, but by this time he's probably out on a patrol with one of the boats regularly based there."

Jim's Exec, a Lieutenant named Knobby Robertson whom I had met when he reported aboard the Walrus after my injury, now approached. "Will we see you at the Royal tonight, Commander Richardson?"

"Oh, no," I demurred. "You fellows have a lot to talk over your first night in. I'll drop over later."

"No, sir. The Captain said he might not get a chance to ask you himself, and for me to make sure that you come!"

That night I realized finally that I had lost Walrus completely.

There was a difference about my old comrades, a difference hard to put into words. They looked the same-they were the same-but the songs they sang, the stories they told, and the general tough, devil-may-care attitude about them were all new. Perhaps I was subconsciously disappointed to find such a radically complete change. I had almost forgotten that nearly a year had elapsed in the interim, that Walrus had made three more patrols, three hard-hitting, supremely successful patrols, since I had last seen them. They had gone on, had continued to pursue their destiny. It was I who had grown slack and soft.

The whisky flowed, more and more bottles were opened, and I felt myself drifting away from them, a little farther with each story retold. This was their party, their right to relax from tension, their given privilege-not mine. I wondered if Jim's request for my presence had only been politeness after all. He had become reeling drunk.

Finally I heaved myself to my feet, declined the proffered additional drink, made the excuse that I had work to do the next day.

"No, you don't! Not yet, skipper-I mean Rich!" Jim grabbed me around the neck, nearly fell, then steadied himself. "Listen.

I got something I want to tell you. Been meaning to for a long time." He turned me half-around, fumbled on a nearby table, grasped a bottle by the neck, waved it at the others.

"See you all later, fellows! Here's the best skipper the old Walrus ever had, my old pal Rich, and we're going away to have a talk!" With that he pushed open the door into the adjoining", room, kicked it shut behind us, sat, or rather flopped, on the bed. He held out the bottle.

"Pour a drink!"

"No, thanks. Don't you want to save this for later, Jim? I've got to go."

"Pour a drink, I said!" The bottle wavered in his hand. I took it, poured some in a glass in the bathroom, pretended to sip it.

"That's better. Lissen." Jim's eyes were bloodshot, bleary.

His voice was loose, his face puffy. "I've been meaning to tell you this for a long time-took too much whisky so I could.

Lissen. I'm a bastard."

"No. you're not, Jim. Quit it. We can talk tomorrow." I rose.

"Siddown! Gawdamit, Rich, the Captain of the Walrus, the best gawdam submarine in the Navy, wants to talk to ya."

I sat. There seemed nothing else to do.

"I've been doing some thinking. All during these last patrols.

Not just last three. Before that. 'Member when you stopped my qualification on the old S-i6? I swore then I would get even with you. I swore I'd make you regret the day you did that to me.

I was gonna sabotage everything you tried to do. I was gonna mess you up so bad you'd wish you'd never seen me. Laura told me not to. Said she'd never marry me if I did that. Said the war would find you out for what you were. Said I should stick it with you for crew's sake."

I sat staring, embarrassed to hear him. I had realized that Jim must have told Laura something of our contretemps, but naturally I could not have supposed it had gone this far. Nor had I suspected that Jim's apparent friendliness had all been a sham. But I couldn't see what he was driving at now.

Jim upended the bottle, took a deep swig. "Siddown. I'm not finished yet. I pretended to like you, and went along with you and the Walrus, and all the time I hated your guts. I thought you were yellow for not tangling with that first Jap sub we saw, and I hated your guts all the way out to Japan. Then when ole Bungo Pete got after us I saw a real submarine skipper in action, and I realized it was you that saved us all. And gradually I came to know that you were a prince of a fellow and that I didn't know the first thing about being a skipper. When you gave me Walrus I found out."

"You're drunk, Jim. You don't have to tell me all this "Down, I said. I'm still not through yet. Gotta get this thing off my chest. This is war, tough racket, maybe I'll get sunk next time, maybe you will. May never get another chance to talk."

He took another swig, wiped his mouth.

"So now I'm skipper of the Walrus. You gave her to me. I'd never have gotten her if you hadn't talked ole man Blunt into it. And I've had three patrols to learn what it's like to be all alone. There's nobody out there for the skipper to look to, tell him what to do… You know that? You're all alone. You got no buddies. You got friends-sure, everybody on the ship's your friend-but you got no buddies. Nobody to tell you what to do.