Cold is the Sea (11 page)

“Compliments of Mrs. Dusty Rhodes,” Buck had said, “only she doesn't know it yet. Now that Dusty has to stay on the site she fixed him up with a hot plate in his quonset and will keep him supplied with stuff. He's not allowed to do anything for you,
you know, but he can't help it if I swipe a couple eggs while he's shaving.”

Richardson had expected to be exhausted, physically and mentally. To his surprise, he felt positively ebullient. He wanted to talk, could not sit still, paced up and down in front of Rhodes.

“You'd better turn in, Rich,” said Rhodes. “You're so wound up right now you'd go
boing
if I tapped you with a pencil. We'll start marking your paper right away; so when you get back over here we'll have your grade for you. The old man will be pleased, I know. He's called a couple of times this morning already, and I told him you were still hard at it. We'll have your orders ready so that you can start for New London by the night plane out of the Falls, if you want.”

“The admiral must figure he's doing us a favor,” grumped Buck from beside the driver of the Twelfth Naval District sedan. “There's just no other explanation. First he treats Rich worse than a plebe at Annapolis, and then he sends us all three on a joyride to Mare Island, California. It doesn't make any sense. We don't even know what we're supposed to do, except inspect the reserve fleet subs. Inspect for what? We've got no instructions at all. He must figure we need a vacation for a day in California, before heading back to the rigors of New England. If he'd sent Cindy out here and given us a week, maybe I'd feel different.”

“Mare Island is where we left the old
Eel
after the war, you know,” said Keith, thoughtfully. “I've not heard of her being moved or anything. Wonder if that might have anything to do with it.”

“No way, Keith. You know the last thing in the world Brighting is is sentimental.” Williams tossed his head as if to lob the words over his shoulder to Keith, in the back seat. The sedan, moving at only moderate speed, lurched frequently on the uneven asphalt road.

“The only thing everybody always agrees on about Brighting is that no one has yet figured him out, or ever will, probably.” Richardson, sitting beside Keith, spoke for the first time in several minutes. “I've been thinking maybe Keith's right. I'm sure the old boat is still there, and our orders to come out here so suddenly just might have something to do with her. We'd all have known if she'd been put back into commission, and I'm
positive we'd have heard if they'd scrapped her or used her for a target or something. So this will at least be a chance to look her over for a few minutes, anyway.” He paused. “There may be something going on, too. This car and driver were waiting for us at San Francisco airport. No word about that, either. He just met the plane. Driver”—addressing the uniformed sailor behind the wheel—“the Reserve Fleet Admin Office is back there in the shipyard, isn't it? Why aren't you taking us there?”

“Dunno, sir. My orders was to take you right to the reserve fleet berths. It's upstream from the yard.”

“We have to catch the night flight out of San Francisco for New York. Are you going to wait for us and bring us back?”

“Nosir. I'm supposed to start right back for District Headquarters. Those are my orders, sir. I don't know how you're supposed to get back, sir.”

“We'll have to work on that,” muttered Rich half to himself, as Buck turned around and Keith leaned forward the better to look at him. “We're not going to have much time to inspect if we have to spend some of it scrounging up a car to take us back to South San Francisco.”

Ahead and off to the right, a large ship bulked high above a forest of masts. The car reached the end of the road, turned to run along the waterfront. “That's the mothball fleet,” volunteered the driver. “There's the tender, I don't know its name, and there's all kinds of old ships here, mostly little ones, like DEs and such. There's a bunch of subs just beyond them, all moored together. They should be waiting for us on the tender, but if we don't see anybody there I'll run you down to the subs.”

The repair ship, or tender, floating extremely high in the water, loomed above the sedan as it passed. Ahead, a group of people stood in the road. There were about a dozen men, some in civilian work clothing, some in naval uniform, one showing the four broad stripes of a captain. Behind them a dozen old submarines were moored to heavy wooden pilings. Serried ranks of gray had faded to a ghostly white. The rounded hulls were streaked with dirt and rust, and rubbing scars showed where the paint had scraped off against the pilings. In two groups of six each, they floated so high that the curve at the bottom of each bow, where it turned aft to join the keel, was visible above the water. Torpedo tubes, normally below the surface, were totally
exposed, bow and stern. The effect was incongruous. If submarines could fly, this was how they'd look just before lift-off.

Prominent on the deck of each of the submarines was a large silver dome about six feet high with a thick, stubby projection on one side and curved vertical ribbing intersecting at the top like longitude lines on a global map. This was the protective covering over a mothballed deck gun. One submarine displayed two such domes, one forward and one aft of the bridge. With a pang of sentimental attachment, Richardson recognized the
Eel
. This was where she had been left, abandoned, fifteen years before. This was exactly the spot, unchanged, except that now there seemed to be fewer ships of all kinds around.
Eel
was fourth boat out in a nest of six, exactly as she had been. She had been carefully prepared for the mothball fleet. All deactivation instructions had been meticulously, even lovingly, carried out. Her machinery files were complete; her spare parts were as up to date as they could be, with requisitions to fill deficiencies already prepared. Her batteries, ammunition, torpedoes, fuel and provisions had been removed, her propellers detached from their shafts and securely stowed on deck. Her interior compartments had been scrubbed clean, painted where necessary, at the end—just before the dehumidifiers were turned on and the hatches locked.

Her crew had gradually been diminished during the deactivation period, until only a few were left. Then these also departed, leaving
Eel
, covered with gray preservative paint, tethered with heavy lines through bow and stern chocks, floating a full ten feet above her normal waterline. And there she lay, now, exactly where she had been waiting all these years.

Could inanimate hulls that once were living ships have a personality, could they think in fact as sailors are accustomed to credit them in fancy,
Eel
might have spent the intervening years grieving for the masters she had once served. The thought was maudlin. Richardson had felt no compulsion to revisit his old ship. Yet now, the first time back, the forgotten emotions were with him, as if they, too, had lain dormant awaiting his return. He recalled that he himself, citing the tradition that the captain must be the last to leave his ship, had shut the last hatch, been last man over the side, on that final day of abandonment. It had been done as a matter of course, not with any show of emotion,
but symbolic nevertheless.
Eel
was not, after all, to be done away with. She was not, like the
Walrus
, gone forever. She would someday be returned to the active fleet, to resume the glory of a free being in the limitless sea. And yet, there had been a feeling of abandonment. He had imagined her crying not to be left alone. There was the memory of a lump in the throat, a voice not quite ringing true, a hand secretly caressing the bridge rail and periscope supports as he took his final leave.

Much had happened since then, but he had not been back. Until now; and suddenly it was all alive again.

The man wearing the four-striped uniform came around the car to Richardson's side as Rich stepped out the door. “Captain Richardson?” he asked, dubiously eyeing the civilian suit. “I'm Jim Boggs, reserve fleet commander. This is sure good of you. I can appreciate why you wanted to do this, and it solves a problem for us, too. Great idea, but why the civvies?”

“They're all we had where we were. But what's this about this being our idea? We were sent here to inspect something. That's all I know. I figured you'd brief us on what it's all about, and we'll look over what we can while we're here, but we have to catch the night flight to New York. So we'll not have much time. . . .”

“Oh, getting to San Francisco airport is a breeze from Hunter's Point. They'll run you over there in a car in fifteen minutes. You'll have plenty of time to party with the Brazilians in the club before you have to leave—ah . . . What are you supposed to inspect?” The puzzlement on Boggs' broad face was genuine.

“We thought you'd be able to tell us. All I know is that our original orders were modified by telephone. We're to report to you, inspect the reserve fleet subs, and leave San Francisco tonight.”

Boggs' face was increasingly clouded. “Nobody not in my own chain of command can give me a surprise inspection. Something's funny about this. I got a telephone call last night, too, telling me that you three were coming and had volunteered to ride the
Eel
down to Hunter's Point. We're turning her over to Brazil, you know.”

“The
Eel?
To Brazil? We volunteered?” Rich was conscious of sudden acute interest on the part of his two car mates.

“That's right. We were going to turn over the
Orca
, but she
wasn't in too good condition, and the Brazilians refused to accept her. So the
Eel
was picked to take her place. She was being saved in case our own Navy wanted to put her back in, and we know she's in top shape. Whoever put her out at the end of the war did a good job.”

“We put her out ourselves, you know,” said Rich, “and I guess we were sort of proud of her. Some of the boats weren't that lucky.”

“That explains it. Some of the relief crews didn't care very much, I guess. Anyway, ComSubPac was so embarrassed about the
Orca
he wanted to send someone over with the
Eel
to present her, to square himself, like. I naturally thought that's what you'd volunteered for. The Brazilians are going to meet her when she gets there, and I expect they'll want to look her over before the yard begins ripping her apart. The best presentation committee ComSubPac could put aboard would be her old skipper.”

“I guess she'll be a lot different when the yard gets through with her,” said Rich. “Snorkel, new radar . . .”

“And new sonar, new radios, streamlined bridge, take off the guns. You'll not recognize her. She'll be a brand-new submarine.”

“When are you shifting her across the bay?”

“That's the whole point of this exercise, or at least, I thought it was. ComTwelve phoned that you were in and would be here as quick as the car could bring you. Otherwise we'd have sent her an hour ago. The tugs are here. We're ready to break the nest and snake out your old ship as soon as you're aboard.”

“Skipper,” said Keith, “this has got to be what we were sent here for. There's no other way it makes sense.” Buck, standing beside Keith, nodded his agreement.

“Captain Boggs,” said Rich, “did your information say we had
volunteered
to do this?”

“Sure did. What's more, I got a dispatch last night from ComSubPac authorizing me to turn the
Eel
and tug both over to you. The tug skipper already knows he's to take orders from you.”

“What about charts, lights down below, people to handle lines, a below decks watch, interior communications, emergency gear. . .?”

“It's all there. We've done this lots of times, remember. We have responsibility for safe passage, not you, even though you'll
be in nominal charge. The tugmaster's spent his whole life on this bay. It's his job to get your old boat over there and dodge the mud flats en route. He has the charts in his pilothouse, but we put a set aboard the
Eel
for you also. There's binoculars, a big thermos of coffee, plenty of box lunches, portable hand lanterns if you want to go below. Matter of fact, you can make the whole trip down below if you want; all you really have to do is receive the Brazilian Navy when they meet the boat at Hunter's Point. We checked out the sound-powered telephone system, so you do have interior communications. You won't have any power, that's all. No rudder, no anchor, and of course your propellers are just where you left them, on deck secured with welded straps.
Eel
is only a barge so far as this little trip is concerned. Your job is to show the Brazilians that we're not passing off another crock to them.”

It still seemed unreal that the well-organized U.S. Navy bureaucracy could have been toying with them to this extent, but Richardson allowed himself to be convinced. Maybe Admiral Brighting had had something to do with this, too, along with everything else that had happened to him lately! “Okay,” he heard himself saying, “it will be our last trip in the old
Eel
, and we may as well enjoy it.”

“It's a lovely time of year to be on the bay, Rich.” The puzzlement on Boggs' honest face had cleared, and its broad features now held a cherubic smile. “You'll find it full of sailboats. San Francisco will be a sight, too. I wish I could go along with you, but I'll phone Hunter's Point that you're on your way. I'll have to tell them that you're not in uniform, anyway. They're expecting you in all your official glory.”