Authors: Sloan Wilson
“Pleased,” Green said, and began to climb out of the bunk. Because the deck above the mattress didn't quite give his tall frame sitting headroom, it was difficult for him to do this gracefully. He bumped his forehead and had difficulty untangling his long legs from a blanket before he stood up, a gaunt, stooped man six feet, two inches tall who had been described as resembling a “Jewish Abe Lincoln.”
“Glad to meet you,” he said, shaking Paul's hand firmly. “This is my first sea duty. I'm afraid you'll find I have a hell of a lot to learn.”
“It's my first day in the Coast Guard,” Paul said with a rueful laugh. “How about you, Mr. Farmer?” He wasn't quite sure whether to be so formal in the use of names, but the watch officer's guide had demanded it.
“Well, I wouldn't say that this is exactly my first sea duty,” Farmer replied, his Maine twang somehow making it obvious that he had spent at least thirty years sailing the oceans of the world, “but I don't know much about the Coast Gad. I've been a fisherman all my life. I sort of came with this vessel, you might say, like the trawl winch. They're taking off the rest of the fishing gear, but I guess they're going to leave me aboard.”
“I'm glad that we've got somebody who knows what he's doing,” Paul replied, deciding that honesty must be the best policy. “I've been to sea a little, but to tell the truth, I'm just a summer sailor, and I have just about everything to learn about a ship like this.”
Farmer's smile illuminated his curiously innocent round, ruddy face.
“That's the way things go in time of warâfirst you get the job and then you learn how to do it. There will be plenty to keep you busy, but you young fellers look smart enough to catch on fine before long. You want a cup of coffee?”
“That's just what I want,” Paul said.
“We don't have a skipper aboard this hooker yet, and we don't rightly have an engineer, but we got the damnedest, finest cook I ever seen afloat. They say he used to be some kind of a real fancy hotel chef before he joined up, and I believe it. He's been baking this morning and I can hardly wait to see what he's going to come up with this time.”
Green said nothing but listened attentively and smiled. As Farmer led the way to the galley in the forecastle, Green followed, hitting his head on the hatch on the way out and laughing ruefully at his own ungainliness.
The forecastle was a low-ceilinged, V-shaped compartment about thirty feet long with three tiers of bunks on each side for the thirty enlisted men who would make up the crew, and a long, V-shaped table in the middle. Around this table about a dozen young seamen now sat, greedily grabbing fresh blueberry muffins from large platters. In the door to the adjoining galley a short man about forty-five years old stood in a white apron. He wore a tall white chef's hat, which even Paul knew to be outlandish aboard a trawler or a Coast Guard cutter. When he saw the officers he grinned in a curiously obsequious but sly way and in a thick foreign accent said, “What will it be, gentlemen? Blueberry muffins, apple cake or cherry tarts? Don't tell me. I'll fix you a selection.”
Without being asked, a seaman poured coffee from a big pot on the table into white mugs for the two ensigns and the warrant boatswain.
“We need more milk, Cookie,” he called.
“Get it yourself,” Cookie replied haughtily as he appeared with a tray of pastries which would have graced the fanciest of restaurants.
“I never seen anything like this aboard any vessel of any description in my whole life,” Farmer marveled as he helped himself to a cherry tart. “Where did you learn to cook like this, Cookie?”
“Where?” Cookie replied, drawing himself up to his full height of five feet, six inches, which bent his chef's hat against the overhead. “Where did I learn my profession? Why in the best hotels of Switzerland, of course, in the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and at the Ritz-Carlton here in Boston. And after all that, this Coast Guard makes me a
third-class cook!
”
“Now don't you worry about that, Cookie,” Farmer said. “As soon as we get us a skipper aboard here, we'll all recommend you for a promotion just as quick as the regulations allow. As far as I can see, you ought to be a regular admiral of cooks if they rate them up that high.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cookie replied with an almost Oriental bow. “I shall always try to please.” Still bowing and smiling in his sly, obsequious way, he backed into his galley and disappeared.
The enlisted men had fallen silent at the approach of the officers, but now a coxswain who looked and talked like a bright college boy, said to Paul, “Sir, are you going to be stationed aboard here?”
“It looks that way.”
“Are we going to Greenland?”
“I guess that's supposed to be a secret, isn't it?”
“Well, we figure from the way this ship is painted and the way they're beefing up the bow with steel plates and all, it sure doesn't look like we're headed for the jungles of New Guinea,” the coxswain said and everyone laughed.
“You might say that,” Farmer said, “but the way the Coast Gad does things, they might send an icebreaker to New Guinea after all.”
More laughter.
“Sir,” the coxswain continued to Paul, “did you see the news this morning about Greenland? It was in the
Record.
”
“No. What is it?”
“The
Northern Light
, sir, she captured a German weather ship just five miles off the east coast of Greenland. They had a regular battle, but when our planes came in, the Germans gave up.”
Paul wondered whether Chris had known that when he discussed the German interest in Greenland weather.
“They had a picture of the German ship in the paper,” the coxswain continued. “She's a trawler just like this, but much bigger and she carries a long gun on the bow, something like a five-inch fifty-one, much bigger than any of our trawlers have. She's got big antiaircraft guns mounted all over her. The papers don't say how much of a fight she put up, but you know the
Northern Light
is just about the biggest cutter we have. I was aboard her just a couple of months ago. She carries two five-inch fifty-ones and two three-inch fifties, along with about six twenty-millimeters. If the
Northern Light
had to radio for planes to beat a trawler, that must have been some tough ship.”
Well, Paul thought, Erich had said the Germans wouldn't be easy to beat.
“That's interesting,” he said. “I'll try to get a copy of the paper.”
“Sir,” the coxswain persisted, “do you think this means the Germans will give up on Greenland weather, or just come back with ships that are even better armed?”
“I don't know,” Paul said carefully.
“I do not believe that the Germans can give up on Greenland weather,” Green said, speaking for the first time. His voice was very deep with a New York edge to it, maybe a hint of a Brooklyn accent. “Without a knowledge of Greenland weather it's impossible to make accurate forecasts for Europe.”
“Why is that, sir?” the coxswain asked.
“To oversimplify it, Greenland weather moves east, warms up, and that's what Europe gets two days later. I'm no meteorologist, but I've read a lot about it.”
“Thanks, sir. Are you going to be stationed aboard here too?”
“They tell me I'm to be the communications officer.”
“Thank you, sir. When do you think we'll be getting our skipper?”
“Before we sail, I hope,” Green replied without a smile, but there was a glint of humor in his deep-set eyes.
Paul hardly heard him. He was imagining a German trawler much bigger than this one being outfitted in some Danish or Norwegian yard with enormous guns. Her crew would be made up by experienced sailors, Germans like his own ancestors, but men who knew the Arctic, not a bunch of novices. Such a ship might be heading for Greenland just as the
Arluk
started north. In what fog-shrouded ice floe would they meet and what would happen?
Feeling restless, Paul excused himself and starting forward, began a minute examination of the ship. The high bow had been reinforced with sheathing of stout oak planks and steel plates. There was a small gun platform on the forecastle head, but no gun yet. The bridge ran the full breadth of the deckhouse, but was not more than six feet deep. There was an engine room telegraph, a wooden ship's wheel, a magnetic compass, pigeonholes for signal flags and very little elseâno fancy modern equipment or naval gadgetry. A door with a new metal sign saving “Commanding Officer” stood open at the afterside of the bridge. After a moment of hesitation, Paul stuck his head in. There was a bunk, a big chart table with a stool and another door that had been newly labeled “Headâfor C.O. only.” The cabin was painted white and trimmed with varnished oak. It was Spartan enough, but Paul imagined the pride he would feel if he ever actually deserved to occupy that space. Dreams of glory! It would be years before he even deserved the job he had. What kind of a man would appear to occupy this stark but somehow royal cabin in the days immediately ahead? Chris had warned him that some of the ice pilots chosen for such jobs were real wild men. Why didn't they make a man like Farmer a captain instead of a warrant boatswain? Farmer somehow gave the impression of knowing everything in the world about going to sea, and he certainly was no wild man.
Continuing his walk aft, Paul saw that the name of the ship had been painted in white letters on the blue smokestack. Some wag had dipped a brush in white paint to add the word “Just” in front of it, so that it read, “Just Arluk.” It was funny, but the scrawled addition subtracted from the trim appearance of the new paint job, and it seemed to Paul to disparage the ship at a time when they should be building pride in her. What the hell did
Arluk
really mean, anyway?
“Hello there.”
The voice, with a slight Scandinavian accent, came from the wing of the bridge of the adjacent trawler. He looked up and saw a rather elegant appearing gray-haired man in a blue uniform with the two stripes of a full lieutenant.
“I'm Hansen,” this officer said. “Are you the
Arluk
's new skipper?”
Flattered by the idea that he at least looked as though he could be the captain of such a ship, Paul said, “I'm the new exec. We don't have our skipper yet.”
“I'm the skipper here,” the lieutenant said. “Would you like to come over for a drink?”
Paul climbed over the rail and to the bridge of the
Nanmak
, which was almost exactly like that of the
Arluk
. Hansen shook his hand warmly and led the way to the captain's cabin, which was the same as that of the other ship, except that it now boasted a clean sheepskin rug, dark blue silk curtains at the portholes, a damask bedspread, the framed photograph of a beautiful woman on one bulkhead and what looked like an original Audubon print of an Arctic hawk on another. Paul was happy to note that a sword just like his own hung in brackets over the bunk.
“It's a little fancy, but I like it,” Hansen said. “My wife fixed it up. Where she found the print of the hawk, I don't know.
Nanmak
means âhawk' in the Eskimo language, you know.”
“It's great. Do you know what
Arluk
means?”
“The hunterâa very proud rank in the Eskimo culture. I don't know who named these ships. Some admiral's wife, I suppose, but she did a good job.”
From a rack in a cabinet over the chart table Hansen took a decanter half full of a colorless liquid and two small tumblers of heavy cut glass much like those which had been aboard the
Valkyrie
.
“The Coast Guard has all kinds of regulations against liquor aboard these vessels, but they'll have a hell of a time enforcing them with us old ice pilots,” he said. “Do you like Aquavit?”
“Very much,” Paul replied, though he had never tasted the stuff. His first sip stopped him from being a liar.
“Well, here's to the hawk and the hunter,” Hansen said. “My, that does sound dramatic, doesn't it? From the look of that German trawler they captured up there in Greenland, I must confess that I'm beginning to feel more like a sparrow.”
The man's Scandinavian accent was mixed with British overtones. His small hands looked soft and were neatly manicured. He seemed to fit neither Paul's conception of an old ice pilot nor of a wild man.
“I was up at headquarters talking about that German trawler,” Hansen continued. “It's all supposed to be top secret, but she gave the
Northern Light
fits. That German gun control system is something. She landed her first three shots on the bridge. Killed the skipper and a dozen men.”
“Why did she give up?”
“The
Northern Light
was lucky. A whole flight of P-38's was right overhead on a practice run from Narsarssuak. They came down like thunder and blew the whole superstructure, guns and all, right off the German. That picture in the paper is from one we found aboard. The idea is to keep the Krauts guessing why she quit.”
“That's interesting.”
“I've been trying to figure what we should do if we run into a Kraut like that,” Hansen said. “With the popguns they're giving us, we wouldn't have a chance at shooting it out. I figure I'd radio for planes and try to keep the hell away from him. The trouble is those big North Sea trawlers can do twelve knots to our eight.”
“What's your answer to that one?”
“If we can keep our eye on the big picture, I suppose, our job will be done once we call the planes down on him. If they sink us before they get theirs, it won't matter much to anyone but us. I would sure try to lead them one merry chase among the icebergs, though.”
Hansen laughed, apparently with genuine merriment. “Are you from the Coast Guard Academy?” he asked.
“No, I'm just a reserve officer. To tell you the truth, I haven't had a damn day of training and I'm so green I scare myself.”