CHAPTER 4

INSTEAD OF THE hangover he had expected, he had a throbbing erection and was damned annoyed about having failed to find a woman the night before. At sea or in places like New Guinea, masturbation was a natural release for sailors, but in this city swarming with pretty girls, it seemed an unholy waste. Now was not the time to go on dreaming about sex. He should get back to his ship, but the very thought of the Y-18 made him want to lie down and again escape into sleep. After all, the tanker was a damn wreck and her crew could do little until she was cleared of gas and repaired by the yard. There would not be much point in just wandering through that rusty hull or sitting in his cabin talking with his roommate, that holy man, Simpson. All he really had to do was check in once a day and stay ashore until the workmen had rebuilt the pilothouse and painted the ship.

That was not really true. He was still in command of a crew. Men deserved attention. He had no right to let his gloomy premonitions of doom for the Y-18 to become self-fulfilling. He should be studying the ship’s blueprints and inspecting every inch of her battered hull. There would be damage reports and work orders to review.

As he climbed out of bed he remembered that he had checked into the hotel without luggage and now could not even shave or brush his teeth. He was lucky to be able to take a bath—the showers on the ship were shut off on the ways. His erection would not die even when he followed a steamy tub with a cold one, but he would not kill it with his hand, not, by damn, in Australia. Tonight he would find a girl, even if he had to advertise for one. He had a brief mental image of himself walking the streets as a sandwich man with big signs, front and rear, saying GIRL WANTED! He hoped no such stunt would be necessary. Any woman who was interested could guess his needs from his uniform, his age and his face. Last night he had just been looking in all the wrong places. He should not have been surprised to find that drunks, not eager young women, inhabited most bars.

When he drew on his undershorts and dirty pants, buttoned up his soiled shirt with distaste, he was able to walk down to the dining room of the hotel with dignity if not cleanliness. Breakfast was a delight. He had forgotten how good fresh fried eggs looked and tasted. They quivered like a woman’s breasts when an aging but buxom waitress put them down in front of him, and the rich yellow yolk had a flavor that seemed just invented. Juicy sausages and buttered toast with strawberry jam he washed down with cold fresh milk and coffee, not the instant kind but a brew with incredible fragrance. Fresh sweet oranges he ate not as an appetizer but as dessert. The trouble with shore food was that it made a man never want to go back to a ship, never want to die.

He went back anyway, telling himself he had a job to do, the privileges of a commanding officer had to be earned, and so forth. When a taxi let him off at the yard, he walked in past the workmen with a cocky strut which was not entirely an act. He was Lieutenant Sylvester G. Grant, the captain of the Y-18, nobody to fuck around with.

The smell of gas hit him when he was still fifty yards from the ship, and the blunt-ended old hull on the ways suddenly looked at him like a 180-foot coffin, the kind made for cremating corpses. But that was no way to think. If nothing else, she was a ship, and if anybody could whip her into shape, well, he could. (He’d better.) The tall ladder leading to her decks was at least new and safe—one small success.

He climbed the ladder briskly and saluted the quarterdeck in defiance of a ship which seemed to make all military customs ridiculous. Catching his mood, Cramer, the chief boatswain’s mate, saluted him too and Syl crisply returned the salute.

“Good morning, skipper,” Cramer said. “They pumped out the gas last night. The tanks are empty, but not steamed out yet.”

“That was quick.”

“I think Mr. Buller had it all set up. They’re getting ready to steam the tanks now.”

“Good.”

“Mr. Simpson is in your cabin, sir. He asked me to tell you that he would like to see you as soon as you get aboard.”

There was a contradiction in Simpson’s behavior—he was excessively humble but somehow he often acted as though he really were in command of the ship. He found Simpson sitting at the desk in their cabin writing up the rough log.

“Good morning, Mr. Simpson,” Syl said briskly.

Simpson turned toward him, his face severe with steel-rimmed spectacles.

“Good morning, captain. There’s a lot I have to talk to you about.”

Syl sat down on the port bunk, the one that did not have the picture of Jesus and the photograph of Simpson’s wife hanging over it, or maybe it was Simpson’s mother—she looked astonishingly like Simpson himself. He wanted to smoke his pipe but with the whole ship still reeking of gas, that would not be a good idea.

“Shoot, Mr. Simpson,” he said.

“Some tank trucks arrived last night and took the gas. I did not stop them. I know you gave permission, but how do I log this transaction?”

“Just say the remaining cargo was condemned and unloaded. You don’t have to say how.”

“Sir, that won’t wash if there’s a board of investigation.”

“If there’s a board of investigation, this whole ship won’t wash—she should be condemned. That’s one reason why there won’t be a board of investigation.”

“But sir—”

“I don’t want to discuss this anymore. The decision has been made. The gas is gone. As soon as the tanks are steamed out, the rebuilding can begin. That, Mr. Simpson, is called progress and I think that’s what I’m here to get.”

“Yes sir. I have important papers for you to sign here. I tried to get you last night before you left but—”

“What have you got?”

“There are the papers which formally transfer command of the ship from me to you. I was temporary commanding officer …”

Maybe that was what was really bugging him. Maybe he wanted command of this ship for himself and had been disappointed to see a superior arrive.

“I’ll need to attach a description of the ship’s deficiencies as I found them,” Syl said.

“I have a detailed list ready, sir. I drew it up when Captain Munger took over.”

“Was he the one who was killed?”

“No sir. Captain Carlson was killed. Captain Munger took over as soon as we got here, two weeks ago.”

“What happened to him?”

“He didn’t like this ship too much, sir. He got himself transferred.”

“How?”

“He looked over the damage reports and the work orders and reported that unless much more rebuilding were done, this ship would not be ready for sea. He said he’d refuse to sail her unless she was in what he called apple-pie order, so they got rid of him.”

Syl said nothing but he thought this explained a lot. Probably he had been sent here because he had already refused to sail a ship after declaring her unseaworthy and could probably be counted on to avoid getting another such incident on his record and finding himself back in the transient officers’ camp. Nobody wanted that … The devil you knew was better than the unknown …

“Here are the papers,” Simpson said, handing him a stack an inch thick.

“Give me an hour. I’ll need to go over them.”

“I have another problem, sir. When Mr. Buller went ashore last night I told him to be back before eight this morning. He’s not here yet and it’s almost nine-thirty.”

“I’ll speak to him.”

“His manner to me is insubordinate, sir, and he continues to wear that cowboy hat. I never thought I’d serve aboard a Coast Guard ship with an officer who wears a cowboy hat on duty.”

“He’s new to the service, Mr. Simpson, and it’s possible that he will be an asset to the ship. Let me handle him.”

“I cannot serve as executive officer if a junior officer flouts my authority.”

“It takes time to settle a ship down, Mr. Simpson. Don’t press me. It’s not your job to do that.”

“Aye, aye, sir. I also had trouble with Chief Cramer, sir.”

“One thing at a time. Please let me read these reports.”

Simpson got to his feet and stiffly walked out of the cabin. Syl read the damage reports, which were horrendous—hull strained by beaching, leaking gas out and water in. New bottom plates needed, a bulkhead to be reinforced, on and on the list went, adding up to a description of a wreck. Simpson had said, “I drew it up,” and Syl suddenly realized that though the ship was in rough shape, these reports were exaggerated. If Simpson was ambitious to get a command on his record, maybe he had composed all this to scare Captain Munger off, apparently with success.

Syl next read the work orders, which called for some new plates but not a whole bottom job, and in general looked as though they were the result of a more optimistic inspection of the vessel. He was no engineer and decided that he would have to wait until the yard completed its work before deciding whether the ship was ready for sea. In effect his orders had been to take command of the ship as is, where is, and to get her back into operation as soon as possible. He signed the papers with a flourish. What the hell …

He put the stack of papers on the desk and went to the wardroom, where he found Simpson talking to the engineer, Wydanski.

“Mr. Wydanski has more bad news for us,” Simpson said. “You should put it in the damage reports: he says our wiring is bad.”

“Not all of it, skipper, just some of it’s a little worn and frayed. We can replace it easily enough if we can get the materials.”

“If some has gone, the rest will go before long,” Simpson said. “One thing we don’t need on a gas tanker is a lot of short circuits.”

“Mr. Simpson, I appreciate your caution, but don’t let’s get in the habit of exaggerating the ship’s weaknesses,” Syl said. “Things are bad enough without making them sound worse.”

“Yes sir. Now may I talk to you about Chief Cramer?”

“What’s the problem?”

“There was a fight in the forecastle last night. He went in to break it up and ended up by knocking heads worse than any of them.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’d restrict all hands who were fighting, including the chief, to thirty days aboard the ship.”

“While we’re on the ways? In Australia?”

“We can’t allow fighting aboard, sir. You have to nip that kind of thing in the bud—”

“Mr. Simpson, we have to keep our crew sane. How many men were involved?”

“Five.”

“If you lock up five men, including our chief boatswain’s mate, during the whole time we’re in Brisbane, what kind of cooperation do you think we’ll get from them when we sail?”

“I don’t ask for cooperation, captain. All I need is discipline.”

“Mr. Simpson, have you ever commanded a ship?”

“No.”

“Do you ever want a command of your own?”

Simpson’s thin face flushed. “In God’s own time I hope that will come to me, sir. After more than twenty years of sea duty I think I am qualified—”

“Whether you ever get a command will depend a lot on the fitness report I give you. Now I’m half your age and have had a hell of a lot less sea duty than you, but this is my third command and maybe you can learn a little something from me.”

“Excuse me,” Wydanski said, “I have some work to do in the engine room,” and he quickly left.

“Sir, you shouldn’t dress me down in front of another officer,” Simpson said, his face still red.

“You’re right about that, but I didn’t start out to dress you down. If I ever do that, you’ll know it.”

Simpson said nothing. He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple wobble in his thin neck. Suddenly Syl felt sorry for him and ashamed of himself.

“Mr. Simpson, you’re a damn good officer and I am glad to have you aboard this ship. I think you’re something of a damn hero to stay here after she was hit. But all the men on a gas tanker, especially this one, are under a lot of strain. They must be touchy, just the way we are. Discipline is important, of course, but the end result is what counts. You and I can’t run this ship alone.”

“No sir. What do you want to do about Cramer and the others?”

“I’ll talk to them. Sometimes just talking helps a lot.”

“If I may say so, sir, in my experience that has not been true. Action is all most men understand.”

“How did Captain Carlson handle this sort of thing?”

“I don’t want to speak ill about the dead sir. If he let this ship get too lax, he paid the price.”

“I see. Look, I don’t want a lax ship any more than you do, but I have my own way of doing things. The two ships I had survived a lot of voyages without the loss of one man. You and I can work together. Let’s try. Okay?”

Feeling more than a little artificial, Syl held out his hand. Simpson shook it briefly. This is a bad scene, Syl thought, but the play must go on.

Suddenly there was a loud roaring noise. Syl’s muscles tensed.

“I guess they’ve started to steam out the tanks,” Simpson said. “I better go make sure they do it right.”

Syl went to his cabin. The sound of the steam hoses would make a conversation with Cramer and the other men who had fought difficult, and if tempers were running high in the forecastle, delay might be all to the good. Syl lay down and closed his eyes. A lot of the time, he’d discovered, the best thing a commanding officer could do was nothing. He wished he had a book to read. If he didn’t get a bunch of books he’d go bonkers in the months ahead. There must be some place in Brisbane where a vessel could draw books—some kind of a ship’s library would have to be built even if he had to buy it. Somehow his mind went from that to the need for making sure a good medical chest was aboard and of course an adequate supply of charts and navigational books. Sitting down at his desk, he began to write a checklist.

An hour later he was interrupted by Buller, who walked into his cabin without removing his white cowboy hat.

“Skipper, things are going great!” he began, his enthusiasm sounding a new note aboard the Y-18.

“Thanks for getting rid of the gas.”

“I got a lot of Aussie cabbage cash which amounts to almost ten grand. I put it in a bank first thing this morning, before I could get into a poker game.”

“Congratulations.”

“Now there’s a hell of a lot we can do for the benefit of the crew with all that bread.”

“Renting them a house is a good idea. Living conditions are almost impossible here now.”

To punctuate that statement the steam hoses gave a louder roar. Syl closed the forward porthole, but Buller’s normal speaking voice was so loud that this was hardly necessary.

“I’ve already found a house,” Buller said. “Hell, it’s only two hundred a month and we won’t be here much longer than that. Even after we stock it with food and booze, our bank account won’t hardly be scratched.”

“What else do you have in mind?”

“A washing machine.”

“That won’t cost much.”

“I got something more in mind. Have you seen the forecastle?”

“Sure.”

“Come look at it with me anyway. I want to show you something.”

Buller led the way across the deck which was now crisscrossed with steam hoses running down the open hatches to the six tanks. As they were surrounded by clouds of escaping steam, Syl was reminded of an illustration in an old copy of Dante’s Inferno. Opening the door to the forecastle, the two officers went in and closed it behind them to deaden the noise.

The forecastle was a V-shaped compartment with three tiers of bunks on each side, a table in the middle. It was dirty and paint was flaking from the bulkheads. Although the weather was comfortable outside, it was much too hot here. Six men who were off watch were sweating as they slept in their undershorts.

“When eighteen men get in here, they’re not going to be much better off than niggers on a slave ship,” Buller said.

Syl shrugged.

“Can you imagine what this is going to be like when we get to New Guinea? You’ll be able to bake bread in here.”

“A lot of the men will sleep on deck.”

“Why aren’t there more vents here? They can hardly get a breath of air.”

“When we run into a heavy head sea we’ll be shoving this whole bow under green water. I suppose we could put in some kind of watertight hatch or air funnels—”

“How about air conditioning?”

“I never heard of it aboard ship. I doubt if even the big carriers have much of it.”

“That’s no reason our men have to roast. There are plenty of big refrigerator components around here. If I can get the parts I can figure out something that will work.”

“I’m not sure we have the juice for that sort of thing.”

“So maybe we’ll have to put in a new generator. There’s plenty of space in the engine room.”

“Have you talked to Mr. Wydanski about this?”

“He said it’s all up to you.”

“How much would the equipment cost?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m a great scrounger. I bet I can steal most of it.”

“Let’s go back to my cabin.”

They walked through the clouds of steam. They found Simpson lying in his bunk reading his Bible. He made no move to leave when they came in.

“Mr. Simpson, this business of sharing a cabin is going to present difficulties,” Syl said. “This place has to be my office. Sometimes I’m going to have to ask for privacy.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Simpson said, snapped his Bible shut and went out, closing the door behind him with exaggerated quietness.

“Can’t we get rid of that little son of a bitch?” Buller said.

“He’s a good officer in many ways and he knows this ship. Look, your air-conditioning idea is good, but we can’t put it high on our priority list. I hereby appoint you supply officer of this ship. Here’s a checklist I made out with a number by each item to give its priority. You’ll note that spare parts for the engine and a medical chest head the list.”

“I’ll get all this stuff—don’t worry about that. Do you mind if we buy a secondhand truck? We can sell it just before we leave.”

“Okay—go ahead. And work with Mr. Wydanski on the air conditioning—as the ship’s engineer, he has to be in charge of it.”

“That crazy old Polack wouldn’t know an air-conditioner from an Airedale—”

“He’s a hell of a lot smarter than you think. He also outranks you. You’ll have to work with him.”

“I’ll try, but the only thing more stupid than a regular Coast Guard officer is the Polack reserve—”

Syl was saved from having to reply to this one by a knock on the door. Cramer stood there, his cap in his hand.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, skipper,” he said. “When you have time, I’d like to talk to you.”

“Come on in. Mr. Buller and I have finished.”

“One more thing, skipper,” Buller said. “The men are moving into the house as soon as they get off of here tonight. Can they leave about four o’clock?”

“There’s nothing much for most of them to do aboard here right now. Tell Mr. Simpson that I said anyone not needed for some reason can go anytime. Just make sure a proper watch is kept.”

“That’s great,” Buller said. “The boys want to throw a big party tonight and lots needs to be done. Will you go?”

“I will.”

“I’ll pick you up here at about six o’clock. By that time I’ll have some kind of an old truck. I’ve got one of the machinist’s mates out looking for one now.”

He left and Cramer came in. Syl asked him to sit down on the edge of one of the bunks but he preferred to remain standing. When he was near Buller he did not look big, but he was about six feet tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, tough despite his gray hair.

“Captain, I guess you heard there was some trouble in the forecastle last night …”

“What happened?”

“Some of the guys came in drunk. That’s not so surprising when you figure it was their first night in Australia.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“They began fighting about who would get the lower bunks, or at least that’s how it started. They tangled it up pretty good. I was afraid somebody would get really hurt so I put a stop to it.”

“How?”

“First I ordered them to stop. They didn’t. Now what do you think I should have done?”

“How many men were involved?”

“Four, sir, and then a fifth joined in to help me. That was Grinelli.”

“How many other men were aboard?”

“About ten, sir.”

“Next time you have to stop a fight, round up a gang of at least twice as many men as are involved and jump ’em. That way you can smother a fight, not just add to it.”

“Most of the others were dead drunk, sir.”

“I can see you had a problem.”

“Not really. I knocked a few heads together and got everything quieted down in jig time. My only problem is Mr. Simpson. He wants to court-martial me or something.”

“He wants to restrict you to the ship for thirty days.”

“I’d rather be court-martialed. So take my stripes away.”

“That won’t be necessary, but you realize that it’s against regulations for anybody in the service to hit anybody—”

“I didn’t hit. I just knocked heads.”

“Any physical attack is against the law, and I guess for good reason. You could hurt someone bad and if one of them hit you, he could be hung for attacking a chief petty officer. It would be better to let the boys fight it out than to wade in without enough force to smother it.”

“Sir, I don’t think this is liable to happen again.”

“Has everyone permanently reformed?”

“No sir, but I used to be a prison guard and I know men pretty well. If you put a bunch of prisoners who don’t know each other in a cell, there will be a lot of lighting until they set up what the warden called a pecking order. After that they usually don’t bother each other too much.”

“That sounds about right, but I hate to think we’re running a ship like a prison.”

“In a lot of ways it’s about the same thing, ain’t it?”

“Was there any officer aboard when that fight started?”

“Just Mr. Simpson, sir. I told him right off. He said I was master of arms and I should handle it.”

“Next time you have trouble, call me if I’m here.”

“Sir, the boys all know I’m head rooster now. There ain’t going to be no more trouble.”

“We’ll forget this whole incident, but I don’t want you to knock any more heads. I’d rather have you use firehoses.”

“In the forecastle? That would wet a lot of beds.”

“You win, chief,” Syl said with a laugh, “but if any man charges that you hit him, you know what I’ll have to do.”

“Yes sir, but they’re all glad that I settled it there and then. They like that better than being restricted for thirty days.”

“Carry on, chief. If we have to have a pecking order, I’m glad the master of arms is head rooster.”

Cramer left and Syl rubbed his eyes for a moment before adding new items to his checklist. All fire-fighting equipment should be inspected, of course. Did they have the latest gear, spray nozzles and foam? How about asbestos suits?

Simpson came in without knocking—after all, it was his cabin too.

“Sir, the yard has finished steaming,” he said. “Would you like to inspect the tanks?”

Syl could think of a few things he would like to do less but if he was going to be captain of a gas tanker … “Sure, maybe you better ask Mr. Buller and Mr. Wydanski if they’d like to come along.”

Before descending into the first tank Simpson gathered the three other officers around the open hatch.

“How many of you gentlemen have served aboard a tanker?” he asked.

“Me, but it was a long while ago and she was nothing like this one,” Wydanski said while the others were silent.

“Then perhaps you won’t mind if I run through the little lecture I give to the men,” Simpson said. “In the first place, we never can go into the tanks unless they have been steamed or we are wearing air masks. We only have one air mask and that doesn’t work too good.”

“I’ll get more,” Buller said.

“They’re hard to find,” Simpson went on. “We always have to remember that even when a tank is so-called empty, it’s always full of fumes unless it’s been steamed. Those fumes are much more explosive than liquid gasoline. A tanker is much more dangerous when empty than loaded.”

“Anybody knows that,” Buller said.

“Let him go on,” Syl said. “I want to hear the whole lecture.”

“Thank you, captain,” Simpson said. “Gas fumes can kill you if you breathe them even if they don’t blow you up. Just a few whiffs will make you feel drunk—some of the guys like it. Breathe a little more and you’ll get terrible aches in your joints, especially the elbows and knees. Breathe still more and your skin, especially your face, will be turned gray by some kind of lead poisoning and you’ll die.”

“You’d have to be a damn fool to get that much,” Buller said.

“Unless you were working on the cargo pump and had to stay down there until it was fixed,” Simpson said. “Now I’m going into this tank. Because it’s steamed, I have a flashlight. Otherwise no light could be used because they all make sparks. I’ll call you after I get down. If you follow each other too soon you’ll get rust from the ladder in your face.”

Syl waited until all the others had squeezed through the hatch, which looked like the conning tower of a small submarine. After making sure they were all clear of the ladder, he followed. He had always had to fight a fear of heights and climbing down in the darkness was even worse. He suffered a twinge of claustrophobia and had to force himself down as though gravity had been reversed. Despite the steam, the odor of gasoline was still strong. When Simpson finally put on his flashlight it showed red rusty bulkheads all around them. The voices of the men echoed back and forth eerily. When Syl finally reached the bottom, which was slightly curved, his hands ached from having gripped the rusty rungs of the ladder so hard.

Going to the side of the ship, Simpson took a screwdriver from his pocket and tapped the metal with the wooden handle. Scales of rust fell down and red dust blossomed in the beam from the light.

“We’ve got the gasoline eating from the inside and salt water eating from the outside,” he said. “God knows how much good steel is left.”

“If we want to get in on the secret, we could test it,” Buller said.

“They don’t have any fancy sonic devices for doing that here,” Simpson said.

“Why can’t we just bore a hole?” Buller asked.

“You’ll note that rust makes a kind of corrugated surface. The thickness would vary so much from place to place that one hole wouldn’t mean much. You’d have to drill so many holes that you’d weaken the ship.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Buller said. “Hell, this bucket isn’t more than about five years old, is she?”

“She was built in 1939,” Simpson said, “but this is the first time she’s been hauled in two years. She was Merchant Marine before the army took her. I doubt if she was ever well maintained.”

It was obvious that Simpson, for whatever reasons, was bent on making the Y-18 look even more dangerous than she was. He was almost like a little boy trying to scare his friends during a tour in a “haunted house” as he led them through all six tanks and the well-like shaft to the compartment for the cargo pump.

That was the worst. There was so little space they had to go down there one at a time. The pump looked to Syl like a rusty old steam engine, though it was powered by a Cummins diesel in the engine room and a connecting shaft.

“That pump is old and it breaks down all the time,” Simpson said when they had all inspected it. “When it does, it often leaks gasoline. I’ve often seen Mr. Matson, our old engineer, standing up to his rear end in gas down there, trying to turn rusty nuts in the dark with a wrench wrapped in tape to prevent sparks. One spark, of course, and that would be it.”

“Why couldn’t you empty the compartment with hand pumps before going down there?” Wydanski asked. He had been silent until this part of the lecture, but did not look intimidated.

“You could if you weren’t in a hurry and had the right hand pumps, which we don’t,” Simpson replied. “You got to remember that the army is always in a hurry. If we can’t get this cargo pump going, they unload us with gasoline-driven portable pumps on deck. They suck the stuff right up through the hatches. Of course that mixes air with the gas and the whole secret of handling the stuff is keeping air away from it. The hose connections on those portable pumps are made for water, not gas. They leak. I’ve seen our decks running with gas for three days while they unloaded us that way. Worst of all, the motors of those pumps were backfiring, stabbing flame just a few feet away from the gas. I tell you, it’s a miracle that this ship is still afloat.”

“Is that the end of the lecture?” Syl asked drily.

“One more thing, sir. Sometimes the army makes us dump gas at sea.”

“Why?” Syl asked.

“Sometimes the big tankers will give us a load of high octane and low octane that got mixed, or we’ll have half a cargo of low octane when they want us to take a full load of av gas for the planes. The army don’t care about waste. Lots of times we’ve been told just to dump the stuff at sea. The thing is that dumping gas at sea is dangerous. You create a cloud of gas fumes that could be a mile long. If anything, even like some native in a dugout canoe, touches it off, you got a fire cloud that can destroy everything around it.”

“I guess we’ll have to go far out and find ourselves a patch of empty ocean,” Syl said. “If we steam into the wind we’ll be all right.”

“You’ve got it right, sir, but if the army is yelling at us to hurry because it’s an emergency, it takes guts to go far enough to sea. Down near Guadal last year, one of our sister ships took a chance because there was an offshore wind. She dumped her gas about a mile off the beach. Then the wind changed and blew the stuff in.”

“And?” Buller said.

“Some GIs were cooking hot dogs in a fire on the beach. A lot of native kids were hanging around. A little girl who was wading got some of the gas on her legs. Naturally it made her feel cold, like gas does, and she went running to the fire. That set her on fire and she ran back to the ocean to put herself out. Then the whole waterfront went up. It took out most of the base.”

“What did they do to the captain of the tanker?” Wydanski asked after a moment of silence.

“Nothing much,” Simpson said with a shrug. “It was an accident. I guess he got a letter. The army got some blame too—they’d ordered him to rush rush rush.”

“Well, gás ain’t always so dangerous,” Buller said. “Hell, they run it around Louisiana in tankers left over from the First World War and they hardly ever get in any trouble. Once a loaded gas barge blew into a swamp during a hurricane. Some bums found it and moved aboard. They built a fire on deck and lived there for two weeks before the thing was found. It never exploded.”

“If it had been an empty gas barge it would have blown,” Simpson said. “God sure must have loved those bums.”

A masked crew of Australian workers climbed aboard armed with cutting torches and began to strip away the damaged side of the pilothouse.

“The yard sure isn’t wasting any time now,” Syl said.

“I hear the army is really putting the pressure on them,” Simpson said. “Tokyo Rose says we’re going to hit the Philippines next month. I figure the army wants us to keep that date.”

“If that’s the end of the lecture, I’m going ashore to buy a truck,” Buller announced. “I’m telling you, boys, we’re going to throw the biggest party tonight that these kangaroos have ever seen, and all hands but the watch aboard are invited.”

“You stayed aboard last night,” Wydanski told Simpson. “I’ll take the duty tonight—”

“No, there’s nothing I want ashore,” Simpson said. “These men are going to be working around the clock and I want to keep an eye on them.”

He then climbed up on the flying bridge and perched on the rail, watching the workmen dismantle the shattered steel. Outlined against the sky, his small figure looked to Syl like a vulture waiting for its prey to die. He looked away quickly, but the image stuck.