One of the sailors near him said, 'Yeah.' Another one, though, said, 'Thanks a lot, Admiral.' Carsten shook his head. You said anything on a ship, somebody would give you a hard time about it.
' Battle stations!' shouted people who really were officers. 'All hands to battle stations. Prepare to get under way.'
Carsten sighed as he sprinted toward his own post. Inside the sponson, you couldn't see anything. All you ever got were orders and rumors, neither of which was apt to tell you what you most wanted to know.
As usual, Sam got to the five-inch gun after Hiram Kidde, but only moments after him, because no one else but the gunner's mate was there when he arrived. 'Do you know what's up for sure, 'Cap'n'?' he asked.
Kidde shook his head. 'Limeys or Japs, don't know which.' That Carsten had figured out for himself. The gunner's mate went on, 'Don't much care, either. They're out there, we'll smash 'em.'
The rest of the crew was not far behind. Luke Hoskins said, 'I heard it was the Japs.' One of the other shell- jerkers, Pete Jonas, had heard it was the English. They argued about it, which struck Carsten as stupid. What point to getting yourself in an uproar about something you couldn't prove?
The deck vibrated under Carsten's feet as the engines built up power. Lieutenant Commander Grady, who was in charge of all the guns of the starboard secondary armament, stuck his head into the cramped sponson to make sure everything and everyone was ready, even though they were still in harbour. He didn't know to whom the aeroplane had belonged.
After Grady had hurried away, Carsten said, 'There-you see? If the lieutenant commander doesn't know what's going on, anybody who says he does is just puffing smoke out his stack.'
'We're moving,' Kidde said a few minutes later, and then, after that, 'I wonder how they-whoever they are; Sam's right about that-managed to sneak a fleet past our patrols and aeroplanes. However they did it, they're gonna regret it.'
There wasn't much to see. There wasn't much to do, either, not until they'd caught up to whatever enemy ships had dared approach the Sandwich Islands. The gun crew took turns peering through their narrow view slits. Hoskins and Jonas quit arguing about who the enemy was and started arguing about how much of the fleet had sortied with the Dakota. Given how little they could see, that argument was about as useless as the other.
After he couldn't see Oahu any more, Carsten stopped looking out. He'd seen a lot of ocean since he joined the Navy, and one trackless stretch of it looked a hell of a lot like another. He didn't get bored easily, which was one of the reasons he made a good sailor.
Lieutenant Commander Grady came back, his thin face red with excitement for once. 'It's the Japs,' he said. 'One of our aeroplanes has spotted them. Looks like a force of cruisers and destroyers-they must have figured they could sneak in for a raid, throw some shells at us, and then run home for the Philippines again. We get to show 'em they're wrong. Doesn't look like they know they've been seen, either.' He rubbed his hands in anticipation.
'Told you it was the Japs,' Hoskins said triumphantly.
'Ahh, go to hell,' Jonas said: not much of a comeback, but the best he could do when his idea had struck a mine.
'Stupid slant-eyed bastards,' Hiram Kidde said. 'If they're raiding us, they don't want their damned aeroplane spotted. That pilot's going to join his honourable ancestors when they find out he dropped the ball like that.'
'Cruisers and destroyers,' Sam said dreamily. He patted the breech of the five-inch gun. 'They'll be sorry they ever ran into us. The big guns up top'll pound 'em to bits at a lot longer range than they can hit back from.'
'That's why we built 'em,' Kidde said. He didn't sound dreamy. He sounded predatory.
By the sound, by the feel, of the engines, they were making better than twenty knots. An hour passed after they steamed out of Pearl Harbor, then another one. A colored steward came by with sandwiches and coffee from the galley. Pete Jonas got out a deck of cards. Kidde waved for him to put it back in his pocket. He made a sour face, but obeyed.
All of a sudden, the Dakota swung hard aport. The engine's roar picked up the flank speed. 'What the deuce-' Luke Hoskins said, an instant before the torpedo slammed into the port side of the ship.
The deck jerked under Carsten's feet. If you got hit the right-or rather, the wrong-way, the shock wave from an explosion like that could break your ankles. That didn't happen, but Sam sat down, hard, on the steel plates of the deck. The electric lights in the sponson flickered. Then, for a dreadful second or two, they went out. 'Oh, sweet Jesus,' Jonas moaned, which was pretty much what Carsten was thinking, too.
He scrambled to his feet. He'd just regained them when the lights came back on. He glanced toward the door that led out of the sponson, out to the stairway to the top deck, out to the deck itself, out to the lifeboats. He didn't move toward the door, not a step. Nobody else did, either, in spite of bawling klaxons and shouts outside in the corridor. They were still at battle stations. Nobody had given any orders about abandoning ship.
Danger-hell, fear-made his mind work very quickly, very clearly. 'We got sucker-punched,' he exclaimed. 'Nothing else but. The Japs put that little fleet out there where we had to spot it-Christ, they sent out that aeroplane to lead us right to it. And they posted submersibles right out here between it and Pearl, and just sat there waiting for us to come running out. And we did-and look what it got us.'
'How come you're so goddamn much smarter than the admiral?' Kidde sounded half sardonic, half respectful.
'Not likely,' Sam answered. 'Now that we've been torpedoed, I bet he's figured out what's going on, too.'
'If the engines quit, we're in trouble,' Luke Hoskins said. 'That'll mean the boilers are flooded.' He stood quite still, a thoughtful look on his face. 'We're listing to port, I think.'
Carsten could feel it, too: the deck wasn't level, not any more. He glanced to the doorway again. If he left without orders, it was a court-martial. If he stayed and the battleship sank, a court-martial was the least of his worries. But the engines kept running, and the list wasn't getting worse in a hurry.
Lieutenant Commander Grady came in. 'Looks like we're going to make it,' he said. 'Compartmenting's holding up, engines are safe, and the aft magazine didn't go up.' He scratched his chin. 'If it had, I think we would have known it.'
'So what have we got, sir?' Kidde asked. 'A couple thousand tons of water in us?'
'Something like that,' Grady agreed. 'We limp back to Pearl Harbor if we can, we go into dry-dock for six months or however long it takes to patch us up again, and then we go back to war.' His features, lean, scholarly- more a professor's face than a naval officer's-went grim. 'We got off lucky. They sank the Denver, and it doesn't look like many of her crew had time to get off before she went down. Not a better cruiser in the Pacific Fleet than the Denver.'
'They were laying for us,' Carsten said. 'They showed the fleet and the aeroplane to bring us out, and then-'
'I'd say you're right,' Grady replied. 'The ships kept the submarines in fuel and supplies, too: not likely they'd have the range to go from Manila to here and back without stocking up along the way. I hope the rest of the fleet manages to punish them. We're out of the fight for now.'
Out of the fight. The words seemed to echo in the sponson as Grady left to pass the news to the rest of the gun crews under his command. The Dakota swung through a long, slow turn, as awkward as a horse with a lame hind leg, and began limping back toward Pearl Harbor. They hadn't done anything wrong except pursue too eagerly, but they were, sure as hell, out of the fight.
'Fuck it. We're alive,' Luke Hoskins said.
Sam looked back at the doorway one last time. He wouldn't have to run out through it, hoping he could make it up on deck before water or fire engulfed him. When you got down to it, that wasn't such a bad bargain. 'We're alive,' he repeated, and the words sounded very fine.
Mary McGregor bounced up and down on the seat of the wagon beside her father. 'What are we going to get?' she said. She'd been saying that ever since they'd left the farm for the trip into Rosenfeld, Manitoba.
As he'd done every time she asked, Arthur McGregor answered, 'I don't know. You're the one who's turning seven today. I've got fifty cents in my pocket, and you can spend it any way you please.'
'I'll get a store doll, one with real glass eyes,' Mary declared. Then she shook her head, making her auburn curls fly around her face. 'No, I won't. I'll get candy. How much candy can I get for fifty cents, Pa?'
'Enough to make you sick for a week,' McGregor answered, laughing. His youngest child was full of extravagant notions. He figured a few more years of living on the farm would cure her of most of them.
