Mrs. Sayre had taken her husband's position at the wheel, and while she watched both her husband (who was lowering the mainsail) and her daughter behind her in the water, she was trying to start the gasoline auxiliary engine.
The moment it burst into life, Admiral Sayre lowered the sail all the way.
"Bring her around!" he ordered, and then pushed past Stecker to get a boat hook from the cabin.
Stecker felt both useless and absurd.
He searched the water and found first Martha and then Pickering. Pickering was swimming with sure, powerful strokes to Martha, towing the life ring behind him on its line.
It seemed to take a very long time for the Martha III to turn, but once she was through the turn, she seemed to pick up speed. When Stecker saw Martha again, Pick was beside her in the water.
It took three minutes before the Martha III reached them. Mrs. Sayre expertly stopped the boat beside them, and then Stecker and Admiral Sayre hauled them in, first Martha, and then Pickering. They were blue-lipped and shivering.
"Take them below, and get them out of their clothes," Admiral Sayre said. "There's still some blankets aboard?"
"Yes," his wife said.
The admiral looked around the surface of the water, located a channel marker, and pointed it out to Stecker.
"Make for that," he ordered. "I'll relieve you in a minute."
"Aye, aye, sir," Stecker said, obediently. And for the first time in his life he took the conn of a vessel underway.
When he went to the cabin, Admiral Sayre-seeing that his wife had already stripped their daughter of her dress and was working on her slip-faced Pickering aft before he ordered him out of his wet doming. Pick stripped to his underwear, and then Admiral Sayre wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
"I'll hang your pants and shirt from the rigging. You'll look like hell, but it will at least be dry," the admiral said.
"Thank you, sir," Pick said.
"Why the hell did you go over the side?" the admiral demanded.
"I thought maybe she was hurt," Pick said.
"Well, I'm grateful," the admiral said. He looked down the cabin. "You all right, honey?" he asked.
"A little wet," Martha said.
"I'll do what I can to dry your clothes," her father said. "Jeanne, you go topside and take the helm."
"Aye, aye, Admiral, sir," his wife replied, dryly sarcastic.
Now wrapped, Martha and Pick looked at each other across the cabin.
And then Pick crossed the cabin to her.
"You want to tell me what that was all about?" Martha asked.
"If I had a bicycle, I would have ridden it no hands," Pick said.
She walked past him to the ladder to the cockpit, and turned and walked in the other direction.
"It was a dumb thing to do," Martha said. "You weren't even wearing a life jacket. You could have drowned, you damn fool."
"So could you have," Pick said slowly. "And if you were going to drown, I wanted to drown with you."
"Jesus," she said. And she looked at him. "You're crazy."
"Just in love," he said.
"My God, you are crazy," she said.
"Maybe," Pick said. "But that's the way it is. And this was my last chance. We're leaving Tuesday."
"Jim Carstairs told me," Martha said, and then: "Oh, Pick, what are you doing to me?" she asked, very softly.
"Nothing," he said. "What I would like to do is put my arms around you and never let you go."
Her hand came out from under her blanket and touched his face. His hand came out and touched hers, and then his arms went around her, as he buried his face in her neck.
This served to dislodge the blankets covering the upper portions of their bodies. Martha had removed her brassiere, and was wearing only her underpants. As if with a mind of its own, Pick's hand found her breast and closed over it.
"My God!" she whispered, taking her mouth from his a long, long moment later. "My parents!"
They retrieved their blankets.
When Admiral Sayre came into the cabin no more than a minute later, they were on opposite sides of the cabin, Martha sitting down, Pick leaning against a locker.
But maybe it wasn't necessary. They had color in their faces again. Martha's face, in fact, was so red that she could have been blushing.
"You two all right?"
"Yes," Martha said.
"Couldn't be better, sir," Pick Pickering said.
Postscript
Kwajalein Island 16 October 1942
The following is factual. It is taken from "Record of Proceedings of a Military Commission convened on April 16, 1946, at United States Fleet, Commander Marianas, Guam, Marianas Islands," under the authority of Rear Admiral C. A. Pownall, USN, the Commander, Marianas Area, to deal with the cases of Vice Admiral Koso Abe, Captain Yoshio Obara, and Lieutenant Commander Hisakichi Naiki, all of the Imperial Japanese Navy:
Early in October, a Lieutenant Commander Okada, who was a staff officer of the Central Japanese Headquarters, visited Kwajalein in connection with an inspection of Japanese defense fortifications. While he was there, Vice Admiral Abe, Kwajalein commander, solicited Commander Okada's assistance in securing transportation to Japan of nine prisoners of war, Marine enlisted then who had been captured following the Makin Island operation and brought to Kwajalein. The Imperial Japanese Navy had been unable, or unwilling, so far to divert a vessel to transport the prisoners.
Commander Okada replied to Vice Admiral Abe that "from now on, it would not be necessary to transport prisoners to Japan; from now on, they would be disposed of on the island [Kwajalein]" or words to that effect.
On October 11, 1942, Vice Admiral Abe delegated the responsibility of disposing of the prisoners to the Commanding Officer, 61st Naval Guard Unit, Imperial Japanese Navy, Captain Yoshio Obara, IJN, a career naval officer and a 1915 graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. The Marine prisoners of war were then being held by the 61st Naval Guard unit.
Vice Admiral Abe's orders to Captain Obara specified that the executioners, as a matter of courtesy to the prisoners of war, hold the grade of warrant officer or above.
There was a pool of approximately forty warrant officers (in addition to officers of senior grade), none of whom was initially willing to volunteer for the duty. When prevailed upon by Captain Obara and Lieutenant Commander Naiki, however, three warrant officers stepped forward, as did an enlisted man, who would serve as "pistoleer."
Lieutenant Commander Naiki proposed to dispose of the Marine prisoners on October 16, which was the Yasakuni Shrine Festival, a Japanese holiday honoring departed heroes. This proposal received the concurrence of Captain Obara and Vice Admiral Abe.
A site was selected and prepared on the southwestern part of the island.
Captain Obara ordered that the evening meal of October IS, 1942 for the prisoners include beer and sweet cakes.
On October 16, the Marine prisoners were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind them. They were moved from their place of confinement to a holding area near the disposal site and held there until Vice Admiral Abe and Captain Obara arrived, in full dress uniform, by car from activities in connection with the Yasakuni Shrine Festival.
The Marine prisoners were then led one at a time to the edge of a pit dug for the purpose, and placed in a kneeling position. Then they were beheaded by one or another of the three warrant officers-using swords, according to Japanese Naval tradition. The services of the pistoleer, who would have fired a bullet into their heads should there not be a complete severance of head from torso, were not required.
A prayer for the souls of the departed was offered, under the direction of Vice Admiral Abe, who then left.
A woven fiber that was placed over the bodies, and the pit filled in. Additional prayers were offered, and then the disposal party was marched off.
On 19 June 1947, Lieutenant Colonel George W. Newton, USMC, Provost Marshal of Guam, reported to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that, in accordance with the sentence handed down by the Military Commission, Vice Admiral Abe, Captain Obara, and Lieutenant Commander Naiki, late of the Imperial Japanese Navy, had that day been, by First Lieutenant Charles C. Rexroad, USA, hanged by the neck until they were dead.