1820 HOURS 24 AUGUST 1942
Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR, had a pretty good idea that he was going to die before the sun, now setting, rose again. It could come violently, and soon... in minutes. Or more slowly... he might last the night.
He could think of two possible violent deaths. The most probable, and the most frightening, was from a shark attack.
At the moment he was floating somewhere in the Southwest Pacific. God knows where. It was a circumstance that flung the thought of sharks right out there in the forefront of his mind.
He remembered hearing somewhere a peculiar theory about shark attacks. Peculiar or not, at the moment he took some small comfort from it. This theory held that when a shark bites something-or in this case, someone-it considers to be dinner, the force of the bite is so violent that the person bitten doesn't feel any pain.
The shark bite was somewhat analogous to a gunshot wound. When you're shot, the pain comes later, after the shock has passed. When a shark bites, according to the theory, there'd be no pain at alclass="underline" a shark would tear away so much flesh-the powerful jaws of a shark could tear away half a leg, or so he had been told-that you passed out from loss of blood before the shock went away and the pain came.
The other sudden, violent death he could think of would be self-induced. He still had his.45 automatic. It had been underwater since he had gone into the drink, of course, but he thought it would still fire. After all, he reasoned, ammunition was designed to resist the effects of water. The cartridge case was tightly crimped against the bullet, and the primer was coated with shellac.
Although they were badly puckered and a dead-fish white, his fingers still functioned. He was reasonably sure he could get the.45 out of its holster, work the action, put the barrel against his temple or into his mouth, and then pull the trigger and see what came next.
It wasn't an idea that attracted him very much, even under the circumstances. In fact, the idea was repugnant. It literally made him shiver. When he was a young marine, for reasons that were never made clear, an old staff sergeant blew his brains all over the wash basins in a head at Quantico. The memory was bright in Charley's mind; he didn't want to go out that way, even if logic told him there wasn't much difference between a shattered head and having half your abdomen ripped off by a shark.
Given the imminent certainty of his death, he thought, it would have been better if he had been killed in the air. That almost happened. Now that he had time to go over it in his mind, he was more than a little surprised that it didn't:
He saw a Zero, a thousand or so feet below him, on Bill Dunn's tail. Bill was firing at a Val and didn't see him. Charley put his Wildcat in a dive and went after the Zero, to get him off Bill's tail.
He got him, almost certainly a sure kill. But as he started to climb out again, another sonofabitch came out of nowhere. Before he knew that anyone was anywhere near him, it was all over.
Parts of the engine nacelle suddenly flew off; a moment later, the engine stopped. Probably 20mms, hitting and shattering jugs, and freezing the engine.
Because he was in a climb when the power stopped, he decelerated rapidly. Moments later, the expected shudder announced a stall. And a moment after that, yellow flames came from the engine.
The nose went down, and the Wildcat began an erratic spin to the right. He reacted automatically. First, he shut off the fuel selector valve. There were probably shattered lines, but it probably wouldn't hurt. Then he pushed the stick full forward-the priority was to pick up airspeed and restore lift- and applied full left rudder.
He didn't remember how many turns he made-five, anyway, probably six-but getting out of the spin took a long time. By then he had a chance to look at the instrument panel. Most of the gauges were inoperative, and there were bulges and tears in the control panel itself, telling him that either explosive rounds had gone off behind it, or that the 20mms that killed the engine had sent shrapnel and/or engine parts into.the back of the panel.
He had no doubt that it was time to get out of the Wildcat.
He held the stick between his knees, so that he could pull both of the canopy jettison rings simultaneously. If you didn't do that, the canopy might well jam on the remaining pin, trapping you in the cockpit; or else it might drag off into the airstream and hang there like an air brake, making control difficult or impossible.
The canopy blew off without trouble. All he had to do after that was unfasten his seat and shoulder harness, and climb out.
That turned out to be harder than he thought it would. He'd been a pilot for a long time, but he was still surprised at the force of the slip stream when he lifted his head and shoulders above the windscreen.
He went over the left side, bounced on the wing, then fell free. He watched the tail assembly flash over his head, alarmingly close, and then he pulled the D-Ring.
A moment after that, there was a dull flapping, thudding noise, and then a hell of a jolt as the canopy filled with air and suddenly slowed his descent.
For a while there was still some horizontal movement. When he bailed out, he was probably making right about a hundred knots. So when it opened, the parachute had to stop the forward motion before it started to lower him to the water.
He swung like a pendulum for maybe twenty seconds under the parachute, and then he looked down and saw the water. For a moment, it looked very far away, but the next it rushed up at him with alarming speed. Then he went in.
He remembered, at the last possible instant, to close his mouth. He even tried to get his hand up to hold his nose, but there wasn't time.
All of a sudden, he was in the water. It was like hitting hard sand. It wasn't at all cushiony, like water is supposed to be.
He remembered to get out of the parachute harness as quickly as he could. He worked the quick-disconnect mechanism and made sure he was free of the straps before swimming to the surface.
If you got tangled in the parachute harness, the shroud lines, or the parachute canopy itself, you could drown.
When he was on the surface, and sure that he was away from the parachute, which was floating on the surface of the water, he fired the CO2 cartridge and inflated his life vest.
The sea moved in large, gentle swells. Nothing at all was in sight, not even aircraft in the distance. Using his hands, he turned himself around. He could see no land on the horizon. He was therefore at least seven or eight miles from any land-and probably a hell of a lot farther than that. In any event, he was too far away to try to swim anywhere, even if he knew where he should go; and he didn't.
He never felt so alone in his life.
He told himself they would probably look for him, either airplanes from his squadron, or Catalinas, or maybe even with Navy ships. But then he told himself that was wishful thinking.
If anyone watched him go down, they would have seen he was in bad trouble, and they'd probably figure he died in the crash.
He was in the water about an hour when the wind picked.up and started making white caps. That seemed to put the cork in the bottle. He was a tiny little speck floating around in the great big ocean. It was difficult, but possible, for someone to spot the brilliant yellow life preserver against a calm blue sea; there was no chance anyone-from four, five thousand feet-could make out a couple of square feet of yellow among the white caps.