for when his hand brushed against it. It was a grappling hook, its six curved prongs covered under a thick sheathing of foam rubber, its length disappearing into the unseen water below.
It was now easy for him to see how these strange men from the sea, under concealment of the fog, had silently dispatched almost a hundred ships and thousands of their crewmen to the bottom of this godforsaken piece of the Pacific Ocean.
Pitt's thoughts were interrupted by the heavy thunder of the.45 automatics, punctuated by the sharper crack of the.30-caliber carbines. Screams from wounded men reverberated the mist. Pitt felt remote and oddly detached from the fight that was growing in intensity.
A stray bullet whined past the helicopter and dropped far out into the water. «Damn you!» Pitt shouted. One bullet into a vital part would destroy the copter.
Three shapes that became men stumbled onto the flight pad, with glazed eyes and sweat trailing down their faces. «Cmon, don't lag,» Pitt boomed. «Get a move on!» Pitt didn't turn as he spoke; he kept his eyes peeled into the gloom. Nearly a full minute passed before another figure ran onto the flight pad. The young sailor's panicky headlong dash was so rapid that he slipped on the wet deck and would have skidded between the railing bars and over the side but for Pitt's strong grasp on a flailing arm.
«Take it easy!» Pitt admonished. «It's a long swim home.»
«I'm sorry, sir,» the seaman blurted. «You can't see the bastards; they're on you before you have a chance.»
Pitt pushed the young seaman under the haven of the helicopter as four more men appeared out of the gray film. One was the helmsman with Farris in tow. The sole survivor of the Starbuck was mentally disconnected from the battle going on around him. He looked straight through Pitt, his eyes wide and dull with abstract unconcern.
«Set him in the copilot's seat and strap him in tight,» Pitt ordered the helmsman. Then he turned his attention toward the forward part of the ship. He cupped his left ear and listened, picking up heavy footsteps several feet beyond the unpenetrable haze.
«Pitt, you there?» a voice yelled.
«Keep coming,» Pitt shouted back. «No sudden moves!»
«No problem there,» said the voice. «I'm lugging a wounded man.»
Out of the fog came Lieutenant Harper, the engineering officer who weighed almost two hundred fifty pounds. Over his shoulder he carried a boy who could not have been more than nineteen years of age. The boy's face was ashen, and a thick stream of blood ran down the length of his right leg, splattering in dark, maroon-colored drops to the deck. Pitt reached out and grasped a huge bicep, pulling the massive body attached to it onto the flight pad.
«How many more behind you?»
«We're the last.»
«Commander Boland?»
«A whole gang of those naked bastards jumped him and Lieutenant Stanley just aft of the bridge.» Harper's voice was apologetic. «I'm afraid they got 'em both.»
«Get the kid into the copter and see what can be done to stop the bleeding,» Pitt ordered. «And have the men form a firing line with what weapons you have left. I'm going to make one last check for wounded.»
«Watch your step, sir. You're the only pilot we got.»
Pitt didn't wait to answer. He jumped off the pad and lunged blindly across the deck, his feet slipping on the wet plates, his breath coming in short deep pants. Shapes loomed up in the mist and Pitt opened up with the Mauser and cut them apart Three men from the sea went down like wheat beneath a scythe. Pitt kept his finger on the trigger, spraying a path in front of him. His foot caught on a rope and he fell sprawling on the deck, the raised rivets marking a neat pattern of bruises in his chest. He lay there a moment, his injured leg throbbing in sledgehammer blows of pain. It was quiet, far too quiet; no shouting voices or gun flashes arose from the fog.
He crept along the deck, keeping to the gunwales, using the lifeboats for cover. The Mauser, he was certain, was down to its last few shells. He stuck his hand in something slimy wet. Without looking, he knew what it was. It trailed off into the gloomy void so he followed it. The stain became a trickle in some places and enlarged to a pool in others. It ended at the still, dead form of Lieutenant Stanley, the detection room officer.
Pitt felt nothing but pure anger, yet his mind was sharp and decisive. His face tightened in a mask of frustration at his impotency to do anything for Stanley. He forced himself to push on, driven by some subconscious urge that told him Boland wasn't dead yet. And then he stopped, listening. A muffled moan came from somewhere directly in front of him.
Pitt almost came upon him before his vision did. Boland was crawling on his stomach, pulling his body across the deck, while a four-foot shaft from a fish spear protruded from his shoulder. His head was bowed and his fists were clenched; the T-shirt that covered his chest and shoulders was drenched in red.
He looked up at Pitt dazedly, his face distorted with pain. «You came back?»
«I lost my head,» Pitt said with a tight grin. «Brace yourself; that spear has to come out.» He shoved the 'Mauser into his belt and then gently dragged Boland to a more comfortable position against a bulkhead, keeping his eyes peeled for any more killers. He grasped the spear shaft in both hands. «Ready on the count of three.»
«Make it quick, you sadist,» Boland said, his eyes filled with pain.
Pitt increased his grip and said: «One.» He placed Ms foot on Boland's chest. «Two.» Pitt put his muscles into play and yanked hard. The blood-red spear slid free from Boland's shoulder.
Boland lurched forward and groaned. Then he fell back against the bulkhead and stared up at Pitt through glazed eyes. «You son of a bitch,» he mumbled. «You didn't say three.» Then his eyes rolled upward and he passed into unconsciousness.
Pitt cast the dripping spear over the side and picked up Boland's limp body, hoisting it over his shoulder. He crouched low and ran as fast as the weight of his load and his stiffening leg would allow, using the cargo hatches and loading derricks as cover. Twice he had to freeze when he heard indistinct sounds coming from the fog. Weakly, dizzily, he pushed himself on, with the knowledge that eleven men would die if he didn't get the helicopter off the Martha Ann's deck. At last, his breath coming in fiery pants, he tottered onto the edge of the flight pad.
«Pitt coming through,» he gasped as loud as his tortured lungs would allow.
The strong arms of Lieutenant Harper lifted Boland from Pitt's shoulder and carried the unconscious commander to the helicopter. Pitt pulled the Mauser from his belt and pointed the muzzle in the direction of the bows, firing till the last shell casing completed its arc and dropped to the deck. Then he climbed into the cockpit and threw himself in the pilot's seat, certain that he had beat the odds.
Pitt didn't bother to clasp his safety belt; he eased the throttle from idle, manuevering the helicopter cautiously upward as the rotor blades increased their humming and the landing skids lifted slowly from the flight pad. The copter rose several feet into the fog before Pitt dipped it forward and deserted the Martha Ann.
Once clear of the ship, Pitt kept his eyes on the TURN AND BANK indicator until the little ball held steady within the center of its dial. Where's the sky? he shouted in his mind. Where? Where?
Suddenly it was there. The helicopter shot into the evening moonlight. The beating rotor blades rose higher as Pitt gained altitude, and lazily, like a homing gooney bird, the lumbering craft leveled its aluminum beak and began chasing its mooncast shadow toward the distant green palms of Hawaii.
Henry Fujima was the last of a dying breed, a fourth generation Japanese-Hawaiian, whose father, his father before him, and his father before him, had all been fishermen. For forty years during good weather, Henry doggedly pursued the elusive tuna in his hand-built sampan. The sampan fleets that Hawaii had known for so many years, were gone now. Increasing competition from the international fisheries and from irregular catches, had taken their toll of the fleet until only Henry was left to cast his solitary bamboo pole over the upper skin of the great Pacific.
He stood on the rear platform of his solid little craft, his bare feet planted stiffly against the wood, stained througji the years from the oil of thousands of dead fish. He cast his line in the early morning marching swells, his mind wandering back to the old days when he fished with his father. He longingly recalled the charcoal smell of the hibachis and the laughter as the said bottles were passed from sampan to sampan when the fleet met and tied up together for the night. He closed his eyes, seeing the long dead faces, hearing the voices that spoke no more. When he opened them again, they were drawn to a smudge on the horizon.
He watched it grow and magnify into a ship, a rusty old tramp that surged through the sea. Henry had never
