look Jim had given to Rubinoffski, that Knobby Robertson had exchanged with Dave.
Push the button again. Go on with it! This is what you came out here to dot You have to kill Bungo and all of his crew!
'Radar! Range and bearing to the nearest pip!'
'North! Six hundred!'
I could hardly talk. My voice suffocated in my chest. 'Steer north!' I croaked.
'Skipper, may I come on the bridge?' asked Keith.
'No! Goddamit! Stay below!' The choked swear words came easily. 'Keep the hell out of this!'
'What's the bearing now!'
'Three-five-nine!'
'Steer three-five-nine!' I could catch the note of disbelief in the helmsman's voice as he acknowledged. Scott had not divined my purpose the first time, but he knew now. The rules. of discipline held firm, however, and the lubber's line settled one degree left of due north.
It was getting lighter, and I could see better all the time. I didn't feel the wind and spray on my face, or the pounding of the sea coming aboard over our exposed starboard beam.
I aimed the juggernaught, myself, exactly at the center of the boat. As before, they watched at first in surprise, suddenly in terror, when they knew. They rowed better than the first boat, started to edge out of our way. I was ready.
'Left ten degrees rudder!' We curved left a little. 'Amid- ships!'
We smote it amidships with our bullnose rising, smashed in the side, tumbled it over, rolled it down and out of sight under our keel. Some sticks of kindling came up in our wake, nothing that could be recognized as a boat.
'Radar, give me the bearing and range to the last pip!'
No answer. 'Radar! Acknowledge!' The voice was weak, hesitant. 'Nothing on the radar, sir!'
'You're lying!'
'Zero-six-three, one thousand!' Keith's voice, strong and dominant.
This time it was right into the teeth of the storm. Mindful of our former difficulty in turning, I gave no order to the screws, only to the rudder. I staggered back as the wind hit me over the edge of the cowling, had to duck periodically as the seas came aboard and broke with great sheets of solid black and gray water yards over my head. The boat came into sight at around eight hundred yards, a tiny dot in the water, an infinitesimal oasis in the great sea-desert. Rolling, pitching, staggering, like a drunken man, we headed for it. Five hundred yards. One hundred yards.
'Zing!' A rifle bullet. 'Zing!'
'Zing!' A sharp rap, as one hit the armored side plating at the front of the bridge, and the whine of a ricochet. Somebody was still fighting. Maybe he had seen us ride down the other boats. The boat turned bow on as the Eel approached, making the most difficult target it could. I aimed right for its stern, watching carefully. Our bullnose rose above it with the short, quick, choppy movement of a ship plunging into a sea, just grazed it on descending, had it a little on the port bow.
'Left full rudder!' I ducked at the same time as I gave the order, a split second before a bullet smashed into the TBT binoculars.
Peering over the bridge cowling, I saw our bow alongside, pushing the boat as we began our swing to port. They were fending us off with their oars. Once the bow came by, of course, our stern would swing wide and clear by many yards. I ducked again.
'Shift your rudder to full right!' Scott had not yet reached full left, reversed himself immediately. We bumped them again with our belly, sideswiping.
The man with the rifle had been standing in the stern, along- side the steering oarsman. I caught a quick glimpse of a short, fat fellow with an impassive moon face as the boat skidded by.
He looked mean, hard, in the oily dead-pan way that only certain Orientals can. Then the exhaust of the two port engines poured into the boat. A sea lifted it, set it down on the turn of our tanks, cracking the ribs with a loud smash of splintered wood. It bounced off, half-capsizing, drifted aft into our wake, bilged and flooding.
I left the rudder at full right, and we came around in a circle.
This time there was no avoiding us. The lifeboat was completely filled with water. The rifle pocked the front of our bridge before we hit.
Our stern knifed through the fragile sides as if they were match sticks. It split in half. A final shot cracked overhead.
I saw the gun flying out into the water at the instant of the collision. There were bodies in the water on both sides as we hurtled past. One shook his fists at us, his mouth open in a scream no one could have heard, and tried to swim over to us.
It was only a few feet, and he managed to put both hands on the smooth skin of our ballast tanks back near the stern. But the speed of the ship and the heaving of the ocean were too much for him, and I last saw him spinning in the wash as our flailing propellers sucked him down and under.
'All ahead one third!' I yelled down the hatch. Then in the speaker, 'Radar! Are there any more pips on the scope!
Keith answered, as before. 'Nothing on the radar, Captain.'
My hands were trembling. They wouldn't stop. My knees too. I felt as if I were about to fall over. I wrapped both arms around the shattered TBT, and deep, wracking sobs came boiling up out of the hard, twisted knot that was my belly.
14
Keith wrote the message to ComSubPac for me. I couldn't bring myself to think about it. To get old Nakame, I had murdered three lifeboat loads of helpless Japanese.
We sent: FOR COMSUBPAC X, SPECIAL MISSION SUCCESSFUL X, SCRATCH BUNGO PERMANENTLY REPEAT PERMANENTLY X, ALL TORPEDOES EXPENDED X, EEL SENDS TO COMSUBPAC.
The answer which came in the next night was hardly the one we expected. Instead of sending us back to Pearl or Midway for a new load of torpedoes, or even requiring us to keep the Bungo Suido under close surveillance for a while until someone could be sent out to relieve us, we were directed to proceed immediately to Guam, there to stand by for lifeguard duty during a series of air strikes. And there was no comment about our success. It was absurd to think that somehow ComSubPac had heard what the Eel had done, but there it was.
The news was greeted with a chorus of dismay from the crew, who had been eagerly anticipating an early return from patrol.
Their reaction to the final combat, during which we had deliberately murdered a lot of unresisting shipwrecked Japanese, was curious. At first I sensed disbelief, disapproval. Eyes looked at me silently, thoughtfully. The men fell silent when I happened near. When I left I could hear conversation resumed, low-voiced, uneasy. They thought me a murderer, I knew.
They would obey me, do my bidding quickly-more quickly then ever-but they would never think of me as other than a man who had killed my fellow man in cold blood. War or not, I had gone beyond the permissible limit.
Some of the officers also seemed to be affected, the only exception being Keith, who had not changed. But nobody seemed in the least unwilling to take the maximum advantage out of it, now that the loathsome deed was done.
As for myself, the longer I thought about it, the more I dwelt on it, the lower I felt. There was no answering the arguments. I had done what I had set out to do; I had destroyed Bungo Pete, and he deserved destroying, by our lights, for he had destroyed many of our fellows. But to do it I had crossed the boundary dividing the decent from the indecent; the thin line between the moral and immoral. I was a pariah, despised, an outcast. I would never be able to look a decent, untarnished man in the face again.
All the way south to Guam the lifeboats haunted me. I couldn't sleep, tossed fitfully, always the tortured faces in front of me, screaming when we drove past them the last time. I dreamed that I could understand
