Crosetti yawned. “It’s boring, is what it is. I think everything about aeroplanes is boring till they start dropping bombs. Then they scare the shit out of me.”
“No, that’s not boring,” Sam agreed. “Tell you something else, though-I’d sooner be bored.”
Later that day, the
Then rumors started flying: rumors that it wasn’t a convoy after all, but a good-sized chunk of the Royal Navy. Sam didn’t like hearing that for beans. He’d fought the Royal Navy before, in the tropical Pacific, and had high respect for what the limeys could do. He’d had a lot more of the U.S. Navy sailing along beside him then, too. If they’d run up against a major British fleet, they would regret it as long as they lived, which might not be long.
When the klaxons did begin to hoot, running toward the forward starboard sponson was almost a relief. Once he started slamming shells into the breech of the five-inch gun, he’d be too busy to worry. Whatever happened after that just happened-he couldn’t do anything about it.
Hiram Kidde put that same thought into words: “Now we smash ’em-or else it’s the other way around.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Well, if they smash us, I hope to God we at least hurt them. We can afford the losses and they can’t, not fighting us and Kaiser Bill both.”
“I’ll die for my country if I have to,” Kidde said, “but I’d sooner live for it.” He puffed out his chest. “Where the hell else are the United States going to find a better chief gunner’s mate?”
“Under any flat rock, I expect,” Carsten answered, which won him a glare.
Commander Grady looked into the sponson. “It is the Royal Navy,” he announced. “If the flyboy who spotted them had it straight, they’ve got a force about the same size as ours.”
“That’s great,” Luke Hoskins muttered. “They’ll sink all of us, and we’ll sink all of them. Last one standing wins.”
“Why should this be any different than anything else in the war?” Sam whispered. Hoskins chuckled and shrugged.
Hiram Kidde peered through the sponson’s vision slit. “I see smoke,” he said, and then, “Jesus, if I see smoke from down here, the fire-control boys up at the top of the mast have been seeing it the past five minutes. And if they can see it, the big guns can hit it. Why the hell aren’t they shooting?”
As if to answer his question, the klaxons wailed once more. Sam dug a finger in his ear, wondering if that ear were playing tricks on him. “Was that the all-clear?” he asked, not believing what he’d heard.
“Sure as hell was,” Hoskins said.
“Why are they sounding the all-clear, though?” “Cap’n” Kidde demanded. “The enemy’s in sight, for Christ’s sake.” He took off his cap and scratched his head. “And why the hell aren’t the limeys shooting at us?”
Somebody ran shouting down the corridor. The shout held no words, only joy. Sam’s brother-in-law had shouted like that when his wife, Sam’s older sister, was delivered of a boy. “What the hell is going on?” he asked, though he didn’t think anyone would have the answer.
But someone did. When Commander Grady came into the sponson, he looked as exalted as the other sailor had sounded. “Boys, we just got it on the wireless telegraph from Philadelphia,” he said. “England has asked the Kaiser and Teddy Roosevelt for an armistice.”
“It’s over,” Carsten whispered, hardly believing his own words. To help see if they were, if they could have been, true, he repeated them, louder this time: “It’s over.” Nobody called him a liar. Nobody said he was crazy. Little by little, almost in spite of himself, he began to believe.
“Maybe not quite over,” Commander Grady said. “There’s still the Japs, out in the Pacific. But hell, you’re right, Carsten: that scrap is liable to peter out by itself. We’ve shot at each other, but they haven’t taken anything of ours and we haven’t taken anything of theirs. Shouldn’t be too hard to patch up a peace.”
Sam nodded. “Yes, sir. And they won’t have any big reason to fight us any more, either, now that all their allies have thrown in the sponge.”
“That’s right.” Grady nodded, too. “Matter of fact, if I were England and France, I’d worry about Hong Kong and Indochina and maybe Singapore, too. If the Japs want ’em bad enough, they’ll fall into their hands like ripe fruit.” He brought his mind back to the here-and-now. “And, since we have an armistice, you men are dismissed from your posts here.”
“Sir, since we’ve won, are we going to head back to the States?” Hiram Kidde asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that, not yet,” Grady replied. “I hope so, but that’s just me talking, not Admiral Fiske or Philadelphia. Go on up topside, boys. Take a look at the limeys we didn’t have to fight.”
For once, Carsten was glad to go up on deck: the glow of victory, the glow of peace ahead, made him forget about the glow of sunburn. Shading his eyes with a hand, he peered across the Atlantic at the Royal Navy force whose government had finally had to yield. The longer he looked, the gladder he was that the wireless telegraph had brought word when it had. The enemy force looked large and formidable.
In an odd way, he felt sorry for the Englishmen aboard those warships. They’d been top dogs for a hundred years and then some. Coming back to the pack would hurt them a lot. He wondered who the top dog was now: the United States or Germany? He looked east, toward Europe. Wouldn’t that be an interesting fight?
He shrugged. However interesting it was, he didn’t think it would happen any time soon. Teddy Roosevelt and the Kaiser had just won a war together. They’d take a while to pick up the pieces afterwards. Maybe they’d even stay friends while they were doing it. He hoped so.
One by one, the Royal Navy ships turned away from the U.S.-Chilean-Brazilian flotilla and steamed off toward the northeast, toward Britain. Sam wondered what would happen to them there. Would the limeys get to keep them, or would they have to surrender them to Germany and the USA? That wasn’t for him to decide; the boys in striped trousers would have to sort it out.
A U.S. cruiser with the flotilla launched its aeroplane to shadow the British ships. That must have been allowed under the terms of the armistice, because nobody started shooting.
U.S. aeroplanes could have tracked the British ships at the outbreak of the war, too, but neither they nor their wireless sets could have reached as far as they did now. Sam had had that same thought not long before, when he’d spotted the
He didn’t notice Commander Grady standing behind him, also watching the Royal Navy force withdraw. “That would be pretty fine, wouldn’t it, Carsten?” the commander of the starboard secondary armament said.
“Huh?” Sam spun around, startled. “Uh, yes, sir.” He made himself think straight. “I expect the day is coming when they’ll be able to do just that. I expect it’s coming sooner than most people think, too.”
Grady studied him. “I expect you’re right. If we don’t do it, some other navy will, and they’ll do it to us.” He rubbed his chin. “Matter of fact, I happen to know we are doing something along those lines. Would you by any chance be interested in becoming part of that?”
“Would I?” Sam said. “Yes, sir! Hell yes, sir! Where do I sign up?”
“You don’t, not yet,” Grady answered. “But you’re a sharp fellow-sharper than you let on sometimes, I think. When we get into port in the United States, you remind me about this. I think the effort could use you.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” Carsten said. Part of that was real gratitude-he’d been talking about doing something like this. Part of it, too, was prudent calculation. Even if the Navy did shrink after the war, they wouldn’t drop him on the beach if he was part of this new project. Having a job he was sure of wasn’t the worst thing in the world-no, not even close.
“Bartlett, Reginald, Confederate States Army, private first class,” Reggie Bartlett said to the paymaster in U.S. green-gray. He rattled off his pay number and the date of his capture.
The paymaster found his name, checked both the pay number and the date of capture against his own records, and lined through them. He gave Reggie a sheaf of green banknotes-bills, the Yankees called them-and some pocket change. “Here is the pay owed you under the Geneva Convention, Private First Class Bartlett,” he said. “Frankly, between you, me, and the wall, you’re damn lucky to get it in greenbacks instead of your own money. These will still be worth something six months from now. God only knows if the Confederate dollar will.”
Reggie grunted. From things he’d heard, the paymaster was likely to be right. He put the money into a pocket of the butternut trousers the U.S. authorities had given him-along with a matching tunic-to wear on the train ride
