Chapter 33

At daybreak, ill-tempered from his lack of sleep due to his injured arm, Sergeant Ubo formed up the soldiers. He selected the guards who would relieve those who had spent the night on the perimeter of the encampment. After a quick breakfast of rice left over from the feast, ten men marched out of the camp in a column of twos. When they reached the beginning of the trail that led up the volcano, the privates from Kure and Osaka should have been waiting. They were not.

Sgt. Ubo swore out loud at the missing men, and dressed down the replacements as though it were their fault. He left two men and proceeded to the next guard post further down the beach. Again, there were no guards, and no sign of where they might have gone. He began to worry, and looked more carefully at the sand. It showed signs of two bodies having been dragged into the bush. Everyone figured out the obvious at the same time.

He gave each of the guards two extra packets of ammunition, and told them to stand at the water’s edge with their backs to the ocean. It was unlikely that the natives would swim up from behind. If the guards saw anyone in the jungle, they were to shoot him without a challenge.

The story was the same at the remaining three posts, and Ubo returned to the camp alone.

When he reported the situation to the officers, who were just shaving, they were alarmed. “We need that idiot, Lieutenant Mitsumo, to rake the whole village with machine gun fire. It is time to show these savages that the Imperial Japanese Army is not to be trifled with,” Captain Nagama blustered.

His Lieutenant tried to raise the torpedo boat on the radio with no luck. They strained their eyes looking out to sea and could not spot its silhouette. Captain Nagama also noticed that the lifeboat was gone, as was Ensign Ishikawa.

***

A large, amphibious landing craft had been drawn up alongside the Great Snitkin. John could never keep straight the difference between an LCM, LCVP, and a LCT. All he was certain of was that this was a fairly big one, and had a small crew who lived on it. At the moment, that entire crew was on a scrounging mission. Every time they unloaded a larger freighter, they bought and traded all kinds of luxuries: movies, books, magazines and liquor primarily. Some was for re-sale and some for their personal use.

The greatest commodity they had to trade was rapid service. None of the freighters liked to sit still where they were targets for submarines and air attacks. Twenty-five pounds of frozen beef could set records in unloading a cargo. So far, however, the green crew of the Snitkin had only offered a 100-pound sack of potatoes and three cases of beer — Hardly a big enough tip “To Insure Promptness.”

John Bartlett watched the other sailors hauling things up from below deck. Every time he saw a red tag on an item, he told them to put it in the LSM’s crew’s quarters, with “The Old Man’s stuff.” Admiral Bartlett liked being called The Old Man. It sounded like he had been a Navy man for a long time, instead of less than a year. When all the official cargo was secured on the landing craft, John made sure the red-tagged items were safe. He could only guess what Frankie might have brought along for Daddy’s comfort. In any event, he climbed down to the LCM by the cargo net hanging over the side. He jumped from one massive stack of equipment to another. Much of it was C-Rations. From the looks of things, they expected to stay there for a long time.

Once the work party returned to the Snitkin, and the landing craft’s crew were still out haggling, John realized that he was the only soul on the amphibious boat. He found a secluded corner out of the sun and stretched out for a nap.

***

The soldiers guarding Yani were strung out single file on the path up the mountainside. One led him by a rope around his neck, a second followed with a similar rope behind. If he tried to make a break for it, they would strangle him until someone shot him. Not trusting subordinates to accomplish such a vital mission, Captain Nagama, pistol drawn, led the small group. Lieutenant Shakaru followed with three other men with rifles. They were supposed to be looking for a white pilot, but all they could think about was the guards who disappeared during the night. The dense greenery might conceal dozens of natives with long, sharp, barbed spears.

When the search party reached the clearing that McDuff had used for his base, the soldiers poked their bayonets into everything he had left behind. It was clear that he had gone. They stayed close to each other during the search, although they saw no signs of life in the bush. When they reached what had been the food stores, Yani knew his tribesmen had been there, and were most likely very nearby. There wasn’t a single tinken left anywhere.

Lieutenant Shakaru said something ugly and threatening to Yani, and he nodded toward the path. They strung out the procession on the narrowing path again, and resumed the climb. When a fissure opened within the crater the whole side of the mountain seemed to slide. Loose rocks above and below them began tumbling down in an avalanche of crumbling pumice and basalt. Terror struck. Earthquakes were common in their own country, and they knew there was nothing they could do but pray. The last man in the little column was struck by a boulder the size of a football, and disappeared over the edge and into the ocean below. The rest fell to the ground, and waited out the tremor. The rain of hot ashes had cooled somewhat by the time it reached the lower level where they were, but everything smelled like rotten eggs.

“Keep going,” Captain Nagama urged. “Let’s get to some level ground, and off this damned sliding gravel pit!”

The pace picked up and they reached the relative safety of the platform of level ground forming the top of the cone. Nagama reached the top first and the two men holding Yani on the ropes spread out to either side of the Chase Islander. Lieutenant Shakaru guarded the rear — but only for a few moments. One of the men seemed to suddenly grow a spear out of his chest, and slide off the path. Another was struck with a warclub thrown by a man who blended with the black basalt outcroppings. The Lieutenant ran back down the path, propelled by sheer terror. No one was pursuing him; he was running from his own fears. All eyes were on Yani, and his captors.

Captain Nagama pointed his pistol at his captive, and the two men with the ropes had now unslung their rifles, and pointed them at Yani. They stood at the edge of the crater, looking down at the glowing center.

The army officer evaluated the situation from a military standpoint. Perhaps he could use Yani as a shield and a hostage to get back down the mountain. Through his body language, which included pointing into the crater, and his tone of voice he made it clear to Yani that he would hack his head off and throw him into the fire if he did not help them down the mountain.

It was a standoff. No one did anything but stand there for a full three minutes. Each waited to see what would happen next. The natives knew that with Ooma dead, they would be without a shaman if something happened to Yani, and the tribe would perish.

Nagama’s desperation was on a personal level. This was not the way he saw the war ending for him. He was furious. He drew the Samurai sword his father had given him when he became an officer, and waved it menacingly at Yani. He railed at the island warriors who now allowed themselves to be seen.

“I was never intended to be run through with a filthy, wooden spear wielded by a cave man. I am an educated man. I am the son of generations of Samurai. I deserve to die on a field of honor, in battle with someone more my equal. I am ready to die honorably with a bullet in my chest for the Emperor and my Country.”

Three seconds later, the once Reverend Doctor Moses McDuff, now turned guerrilla, granted his wish.

***

Although the archipelago known as the Volcano Islands, lay considerably further to the north of Island 321, the name could have applied to any of the green dots in the South Pacific. For the most part, they were the tops of volcanoes rising thousands of feet from the ocean floor. The advance party that had gone ashore on Island 321 felt seismic activity from the first day. However, the Navy command did not want to hear such complaints. The sailors and Marines were ordered to consider such rumblings as normal, and go about their duties as assigned.

It was also a geologic fact that many of the volcanoes were connected to each other along a fault in a huge tectonic plate. When one burped, they all hiccuped. In fact, all the islands over a wide range were joined by a plateau-like shelf that made the water too shallow for something the size of a freighter to get very close. Amphibious craft were the only way materiel could be ferried ashore.

John Bartlett was stirred from his brief nap by a sudden commotion at the rail of the Snitkin. A growing crowd of men were yelling and pointing toward the island. He sat up and turned his head toward where the men were looking. He was just in time to see a fireball of gas, lava and smoke burst skyward. A few minutes later he heard what sounded like hail coming down on the boxes, crates and cartons stacked around him. They were little, hot, black marbles of obsidian, volcanic glass. He scrambled to his feet and almost dove into an open doorway of the crew’s quarters.

As the stones clattered on the metal roof of the conning-tower-like structure, he looked again toward the island. What he saw was horrifying. A large portion of the beach was sliding into the ocean amid much hissing and steaming. He could see Marines trying to outrun the encroaching waves, then disappear in the surf.

Aboard the Snitkin, panic was breaking loose. The public address system blared: “General Quarters. General Quarters.”

In the shallow waters off the little atoll, gentle swells were taking on the aspect of roller coaster dips. The captain wanted to get out to sea and away from the shelf that magnified the ocean’s movement.

Marine Lieutenant Bartlett realized that there was no one on the landing craft to steer it to safety. Not that he was sure where “safety” was. Heading into the sinking island did not seem to be an option. If the truth were known, he was more concerned about the loss of his father’s red-tagged possessions. If they lost this boatload of equipment, they would be forced to live on standard Government Issue.

He scrambled onto an empty cargo net, hanging over the side from a crane. “I’ll hang on to the cargo net,” he yelled to the deck officer. “Lower me onto the boat. I’ll handle it.”

Clinging to the net, he dropped to the LCM, but found it difficult to maintain an upright position. Although they were right next to each other, the freighter rose and fell at a different rate than the lighter boat. The pallets started to shift to starboard when the hawser connecting the two ships was pulled taut by the action of the sea.

The relative positions of the two ships changed so rapidly that the cargo net first lay limp on the deck, then virtually jumped into the air. On the first try, Lieutenant Bartlett fell off the net and thumped hard onto a wooden case.

Unsympathetically, the deck officer called “Give it up, Lieutenant. God damn it, get back so we can get the hell out of here.”

As the rope to the cargo net tightened, Lieutenant Bartlett got a foot tangled in it and rose into the air, hanging by one leg. The crew reeled him in like a Marlin that had broken the surface. If they didn’t get him up fast enough, he would be dropped back into the deck head-first.

John watched the procedure from below with an idiotic grin. His old pal, Frankie, rose rapidly to the end of the crane and they swung him aboard. He was dropped unceremoniously on the deck of the Snitkin. His steel helmet kept him from getting a fractured skull, but his neck was in pain. The deck officer said again, “We want to get out of here as fast as we can. That God damned island is sinking, and we don’t want to get sucked in after it. This is the South Pacific. We’re gonna get ripped apart, capsized or blown away if we don’t get rid of the damn landing craft.”

“You can’t cut it loose. All our equipment is on that boat.”

In the meantime, two Marine sergeants and the Chief Petty officer who piloted the landing craft out to the supply ship were panicking also. They had come aboard the larger vessel loaded with money from the men back on shore. Their objective was to buy as much liquor of any variety as they could put their hands on. The chief was now sitting on four cases of Old Grand Dad, while they rigged the cargo net to swing them over the side.

“Belay that shit,” the deck officer screamed, trying to sound nautical. “You guys aren’t going anywhere with that cargo net...”

The Snitkin took a sharp drop, like an elevator slipping two floors. In spite of the officer’s orders, the cargo net swung out and lowered the cases of whiskey down toward the smaller boat. However, it was on a downward trip and the cases crashed into the rapidly ascending steel deck amid the heart-rending sound of breaking glass.

Apprentice Seaman Bartlett was on the net in a flash. He cut the rope with a bayonet before it could be yanked up into the air again for a second dashing. With no counterweight, the rope reeled back up like a window shade. The hoist looked like a yardarm. If he had his way, Chicken-shit Lieutenant Frankie would be swinging from it.

The precious fluid from the broken bottles spread out across the deck as John watched.

***

The sudden shot that felled Captain Nagama took everyone by surprise. One of Yani’s tormentors, the one who had held the trailing rope, raised his rifle above his head, and in a grand gesture of surrender threw it into the underbrush. He stood with both hands above his head, smiling and chattering about bearing the Blackfella no ill will. The Chase Islander nearest him ran forward with an ornately carved warclub, and hit him squarely in the face.

The second guard took a defensive position for hand-to-hand combat with his bayonet-tipped rifle as he had been taught. In a half crouch, he challenged the bearer of the warclub. The black man smiled and obviously relished the opportunity to demonstrate his proficiency with his massive weapon. Almost in a wrestler’s stance, he circled his opponent, and moved in closer.

The position assumed by the Japanese solider also proved a springboard for a quick sprint. Converting all his adrenaline to energy, he darted to the right and chose to do a modified swan dive into the steamy volcano’s throat rather than allow himself to be either defeated or captured by the fierce natives hemming him in on all sides.

Yani took the ropes off his neck and threw them to the ground with a display of showmanship. McDuff stood up almost immediately after it was clear the soldiers were surrendering. He seemed to be ready to use his rifle again, if need be, but after the scuffle was over he carried it by its sling, almost dragging it behind him.

He and Yani walked briskly. When they reached each other, the two men embraced in a show of true emotion. He had saved his friend’s life, finally returning the favor Yani had performed back on Christ’s Despair. Tears of joy and relief streamed down their faces.

A rhythmic noise caught McDuff’s attention. All the warriors were thumping the butts of their spears on the ground or against their shields, and were banging warclubs against outcroppings in unison. Then, almost like a referee in a boxing match Yani raised one of McDuff’s arms. He turned to the agitated men and shouted, “Pooja! Pooja!”

The men thumped louder and faster and chanted together: “Pooja! Pooja! Pooja! Pooja!”

In addition to his Harvard Bachelor of Science Degree and his Doctorate of Divinity from The True Church of God Seminary, Moses McDuff was now a warrior of the Pooja totem. He was a crocodile.