He pressed the shoulders of the other two men. More seriously injured, they had been strapped in even tighter. He nodded and smiled at their mumbled gratitude, wished them quick recoveries, and then wandered aft toward the stern, in the vicinity of the motor room, where the skin of Eel’s ballast tanks began to curve in as the hull narrowed.
It was about here, on the port side, that Captain Tateo Nakame had managed to place his hands on Eel’s heaving side, had tried to climb aboard. He would no doubt have continued the unequal fight if he had succeeded in doing so, would have striven somehow to destroy Eel and himself with her, had he been able. It was from this spot that he had cast that last look at Rich, the look which expressed all his hatred, his dedication, his desperation at being destroyed after so many successes.
Richardson would never forget the lines on his face, the agony etched there unutterably as he confronted a fate he must have partly expected, which was now arrived. On sudden impulse, Rich remembered, he put down his binoculars, exposed his own face. It was more a symbolic act than a logical one. It was some unconscious memory, some atavistic tribal recollection of ages past, which had impelled him. Respected enemies at their final confrontation, when one was to die, stood face to face.
There was a discoloration on the smooth black ballast tank surface. Some stray streak of harbor oil, splashed up on the way in. The orange and purple hues contrasted with the black skin of Eel’s hull, shifted shape as he approached. In the changing colors he could suddenly see the streaked outline of a clutching hand — two hands. Bungo’s. It was not possible that the impression of Bungo’s hands could have stayed there, persisted, under three weeks of ceaseless washing by the sea as Eel voyaged homeward from the coast of Japan! Yet, somehow, the kaleidoscopic image was there, oozing, slipping — the fingernails digging — grasping for purchase. Bungo had made a tremendous effort, a superhuman effort, to climb that impossibly slick curve of steel.
Rich had been the only man to see it, to appreciate it, to gaze heartlessly at him as he died.
This had been the end for Captain Tateo Nakame, of the Imperial Japanese Navy. “A mean old bastard,” Blunt had called him. He might well have been all of that; he was also a dedicated officer of the old school who had given his all for his country. At some other time, in some other context, he might have been a friend, a man to admire. He had his counterpart many times over in the U.S. Navy.
“Captain?” he did not recognize the voice. The handprints were dissolving, drifting, were no longer recognizable. “Captain?” Through the fog, it was Keith. “Captain, we’ve got everything set to disembark the crew and shift them over to the Royal Hawaiian. Will you be coming over with us?”
“No, Keith, I’ve got a few things yet to do.…”
“Matter of fact, I do too, sir. They’ve secured the galley, but I had them lay on some sandwiches and there’s some coffee left, so we can have a fair lunch. Aren’t you going up to the admiral’s mess?” Whatever Keith’s intention, he had broken the spell. Maybe this was what he had meant to do all along. “There’s only a few of us left aboard, Captain; everybody else is in the bus. Okay if I shove them off? Then I’ll join you down in the wardroom.”
“Okay, Keith.” Now that he had been reminded of it, he was hungry. Breakfast had been early that morning. The crowd on deck had pretty well dissipated. Eel was now just another submarine among the many tied up at the docks in various stages of refit. Soon she would be moved over to a routine berth, to free the space in front of the ComSubPac headquarters for another submarine due to return from patrol. But this would not be his responsibility, nor Keith’s. Someone else would do it — the “refit commanding officer” (who was he, anyway? He should know; the man must have been in that crowd he had tried to talk to on the forecastle, must have introduced himself). Richardson climbed down the ladder into the crew’s dinette. At sea it had always been filled with an active throng of men, either reading, seeing a movie, playing some game, or eating. Now it was deserted, vacant, like the whole submarine. Already silent, devoid of life. Stagnant, the way life usually became. And smelling a little stagnant, too.
He moved forward into the wardroom. There was a pile of official mail, some newspapers, a sheaf of patrol reports of other submarines. By custom, all of it — even the official letters — would be looked at during the next patrol. Things demanding answers immediately would be brought to him by the refit skipper. No point in worrying about it now. No point in thinking about any of it. Keith would be waiting and was probably hungry.
Submarine skippers returning from war patrol generally got the use of an automobile from the ComSubPac motor pool during their stay in port. Favorite skippers always got the best cars, but of course they had to drive them themselves. None so far as he knew, Richardson reflected as he arrived in front of the admiral’s house on Makalapa Hill, had ever been given the admiral’s own car and driver.
“What are your instructions, driver?” he said as he stepped out of the car.
“Deliver you, sir, and return when you or the admiral send for me,” replied the sailor. He was dressed in immaculate whites. His sleeves bore several hashmarks denoting successive enlistments. He wore a silver submarine insignia.
Struck by sudden curiosity, Richardson bluntly asked the obvious question. “How is it that an experienced submariner like you is pushing this sedan around Pearl Harbor?”
“I was on the Nerka, Commander,” said the man, suddenly sober. “They took me off just before Captain Kane took her out on her last run. This is my relief crew assignment, and I guess I was just lucky. In a couple of weeks I’ll be getting my orders back to a new sub in the States.”
“Thanks, sailor,” said Richardson, solemn in his turn. “I’m sorry. Captain Kane was a damn good friend of mine.”
“I know it, sir.” The driver seemed to have difficulty in speaking. “Thank you for what you did for him and my buddies.”
The man wanted to say something more. There was a hint of embarrassment in his eyes, as if ashamed to be caught in a sentimentality. He avoided those of his passenger, stared through the windshield as he began to speak, then wrenched himself around to face Richardson. “We know what you done out there, sir,” he said, “and why you done it. I was with Captain Kane on the R-12 before, and I put in to go with him on the Nerka. He was a great skipper. Everybody on that boat loved him. Now I’m supposed to go back to Mare Island for a new sub, but I was just wondering — my buddies are all out there with him. It’s almost like I jumped ship on them. I should go out one more time, before I go back, because of that. So — I was wondering — do you have room for a spare auxiliaryman on the Eel?”
Richardson made note of the man’s name, service number, and organization in the thin notebook he habitually carried. He had walked nearly the entire distance to Admiral Small’s front door before the despairing realization struck him. “We all know what you did,” the man had said. Richardson should have expected this. Of course everyone knew. Certainly the Nerka’s auxiliaryman did not condemn him, would even support him because of his own feeling of loss. But he knew him for what he was: the man who had killed Bungo Pete by running down the lifeboats of a torpedoed ship.