The Jonah Watch

Chapter 16

That word, jonah, that name—sparked in the minds and affrighted hearts of men, but the spark was dull and obscure during those first desperate night hours required for the wind to drop. The sea piled, ran as high as most men could ever remember having seen it run. As the wind dropped, the sea built. Adrian made heavy, tortured way. It buried its bows. Green water still reached the bridge, but water no longer swamped the flying bridge. On the flying bridge, the new shoring had disappeared from beneath light, stout cable. Speculation said that the entire bridge had been twisted, for the quick-release gear on the cable was still fastened. The flag locker was dented. The main deck was missing all but a single locker, but the winch was intact. The boat still hung in the davits like a small, white miracle. The 20-mm guns were wet beneath their waxed canvas covers. When Conally broke into the line locker, belowdecks and aft, he found an inch of water shipped through the seal of the watertight hatch. Conally swore to Howard that the inch of water was more scary than any ghost. That inch of water, although Conally did not say as much, was an insult to intelligence, like finding that the laws of gravity and flotation were repealed. Gunner Majors, who looked like a halfback ought to look, behaved like a halfback as he bounced about the boat deck. Majors was in definite hazard as he attempted to dry and oil those useless and silly guns. In the bow, the three-inch fifty had been stripped of its waterproof shroud. The muzzle plug was knocked out. Water filled the barrel. Water crashed and swept the gun as the water tumbled high to the bridge, and there was nothing Majors could do about that.

That word Jonah, that name—sparked from dull glow to brilliant, flashing fear as soon as the midwatch began.

Levere was a hawk-faced silhouette, more rigidly set in the high captain’s chair than any welded fixture. Dane and Chappel alternated watches, and it was Chappel who took the mid. Belowdecks, Racca was strapped into his bunk, buzzy and drugged with codeine after the morph wore off. There was nothing to be done with Racca. One by one men dropped by his bunk, clung to the rail of the bunk, and joked to Racca, who was nearly unconscious and fairly beyond caring about anything but his one preoccupation. He hummed, sang the word, Jonah, in a dopey and drugged voice, and even Glass could not insult him enough to bring him to another subject. Howard substituted Brace’s name for Racca’s on the engine room watch list, and—there being nothing else that he could do, either—waited.

Where it came from, no man knew, but the spectre arrived as an independent mist walking across the water, or slightly above the water, like a wanderer across a barren planet, its meandering accidently crossed by one of those ships doomed by myth to cruise an unending and haunted search. The spectre might have passed unnoticed in the night, or might have been mistaken for a dash of phosphorescence that lighted the dark, breaking sea.

Quartermaster Chappel checked his lights to see if he still had any. The searchlight on the port wing failed. Chappel sent word for electrician Wysczknowski to lay to the bridge. Bosun striker Joyce had the helm, and yeoman Howard was alternating radio and radar watch with James. Chappel entered the bridge from the port wing, where he had returned to fiddle the light. His horsey-looking head, his bent stance as he glanced at the plot, made him look like a mild-mannered piece of ivory trapped in a chaotic game of chess. The sea mounted from the bow, rode like a tide against the house, rose crashing in white and black shatters. Chappel’s foul weather gear was slick. When water dripped from his watch cap onto the chart, he seemed stricken with small pain. He dabbed at the blot with his handkerchief, probably the only handkerchief aboard.

“It may be a circuit,” he said. “Permission to leave watch and check the starboard light.”

Levere grunted. “I have the deck. Go ahead.”

Chappel bent over the log and wrote meticulously in his accurate manner that was said to drive Dane crazy. Joyce spun the wheel, looked like a man searching for the meaning of life as he stared into the gyro repeater.

“Need a hand?” Howard asked Chappel.

“I believe you have the radio and radar watch. I believe there is traffic on the radio right now.”

Howard turned the receiver higher. Through the static a voice was yammering, high-pitched and unreadable. The voice was faint, but while the words said nothing, the crackling, blanking static did not conceal the hysteria in the voice. “Stay on that,” Chappel said, “as a matter of interest. Yes?” He undogged the hatch to the starboard wing, stepped through, and the wind swallowed his grumbles.

From such great distance there was nothing about that radio traffic that could affect Adrian, a ship already on a job. Howard listened in protest but with a bad conscience. Levere sat like a statue and faced the high speed wipers, a statue which heard every bearable sound.

“…Fox niner-seven,” said the radio, and returned to its hysteric gabble. Howard leaned forward. From the helm came a small, uneasy movement from Joyce.

“Cutter Able,” Levere said. “Let’s have that box turned all the way up.” Beneath the small glow of the starboard running light, Chappel’s horse face was greenly blanched and bent low over the canvas cover of the searchlight. He released securing lines. Howard turned the receiver full, and the bridge was filled with the flak of static that gabbled, bubbled, spit and cracked. From the starboard wing the searchlight came on, and it threw a beam across the heaving, rolling, breaking sea. The beam began to shift as Chappel traversed the range of the light, checking meticulously.

“Gabble pop flak gabble fire,” said the radio. “Lost puff,” said the radio, “lost pow…”

“Cap—”

“I heard it. Get Chappel in here.”

The searchlight remained fixed and the spectre moved into the beam, walking, walking. Adrian pitched. Chappel met the movement and traversed. The spectre walked, walked. It moved across the tops of swells with the steady pace of a man on an errand.

“Belay that order,” said Levere.

Joyce gave a small nicker of fear. He looked up, remembered the compass, spun the wheel.

“Cap.”

“I see it.”

Adrian pitched forward and the searchlight traversed. The spectre walked, and in the strong light the wrinkles of its clothing were unaffected by water. It was dry. The dungaree pants crimped at the back of the knee, and the dungaree shirt followed the swinging movement of arms. It was not possible in that light to see either more or less than what was there, and what was there was a set of sailor’s dungarees walking without benefit of head, hands or feet. Howard gasped, had a happy and innocuous and stupid thought. He shifted the scale of the radar down to one mile range and hid his face in the mask. When he raised his head from the mask, the spectre was gone.

“No contact.”

“I didn’t expect one.” Levere stood away from the captain’s chair. He spoke as quietly as ever, but he—who had roamed every latitude of those northern waters and who would tell tales—was awed.

“Nan mike fox two-one from nan mike fox, priority.” District radio, with its larger transmitter, came in clear.

“Callin’ Abner.”

“Fitz two-one,” said the radio.

Howard reached for a message blank. On the wing, green shadowed, Chappel covered the searchlight. His lips moved in green and serious, dark-shadowed conversation with himself—or with the starboard running light, or with the sea. He worked rapidly, or as rapidly as a meticulous and ritualistic character could work.

“Information all floating units,” said District, “information Officer in Charge New Bedford.”

From the rear of the bridge, where he stood after having silently arrived, and shocking as a present spectre, electrician Wysczknowski gave a small moan, a terrible sigh. He watched heads jerk before him as if hit with a cattle prod. “Calling Abner,” he said apologetically.

“If you ever do that again…” Levere heard his own voice. “The port searchlight is out,” he said, so quietly that his words were nearly swallowed in the crashing sound of water. “We’ll need that light, directly.”

The dogs on the hatch turned slowly as Chappel methodically reentered from the starboard wing. The dogs turned so slowly that any man could see that Chappel was arguing with himself, was forcing control; appealing to that formalistic and methodical self which had hauled him through so many scrapes. He entered the bridge, carefully dogged the hatch, turned and stood momentarily silent and dripping. His long face rose above the high collar of his waterproofs. The effect was of a man sired by experimental and equestrian gods. He backhanded water from his face, muttered, walked to the log, then hesitated above the entry. Chappel had logged ice, storm, death, and the loss of ships, but he had never logged a ghost.

“Unexplained weather phenomena, of no consequence.” Levere’s voice was pitched to serene authority that allowed no grand opinions. “Cutter Able is on fire. Give me Abner’s position.”

Chappel nodded as if the new information made complete sense. He wrote meticulously, then turned to the radio file and to his charts.

“I got the proceed-and-assist,” said Howard. “I can’t make Abner’s send.”

“That,” said Chappel abstractly, “is the reason God made quartermasters.” He turned to Howard. “You have not logged Wysczknowski to the bridge and to repair.”

Howard turned, indignant.

“When your log is complete,” said Levere, “raise Aphrodite. Then get on twenty mile range. I estimate another two hours.”

“Watchstander?”

“Not unless you want to stand it,” Chappel said. “I don’t want to risk a man out there.”

Howard, who in some vague way understood that he was taking flak because of the unknowable, and having perhaps been accused of being a Jonah, chose the course of wisdom and kept his big mouth shut.

“There is no excuse for a log to get behind,” Levere said, “but the yeoman has been busy.”

“I make it about twenty miles,” Chappel told Levere, “assuming both ships maintained their direction of search since last position report.”

Levere grunted above the crashing of waves, found a deep grunt at the top of a swell. The grunt expressed the opinion that, because it was Able, he was being asked to make a huge assumption. Howard hesitated between a sigh and a sneer, but he did not log the grunt.