Zerk hitched up his trousers. “That’s right,” he said, as though this was the first time he had thought about it, too.
Sully was annoyed. “Do you or don’t you want to see the damn thing?” he demanded.
We followed Sully into the forward battery and into the yeoman’s office, and there on nice green monk’s-cloth he’d set it up—his Christmas tree. It was a beautiful job. Coming down from Aparri he’d begun it. He’d started with a broom handle, drilled holes in it, then borrowed a handful of applicator sticks from Loaiza and inserted them into the holes. They became the branches. Then he’d got some red and blue flag bunting from Frank Franz. He’d made tinsel by gluing tinfoil from cigarette packages to strips of paper, and decorated the branches with that. He’d painted half a dozen flashlight bulbs green and red and silver and strung them about on a dry-battery circuit, and so his Christmas tree gleamed green, red, and silver—a work of art two feet high.
For the next twenty minutes a steady stream of men came to see and admire. Even Zerk admired it. “But it needs presents,” he said.
“Yeah,” admitted Sully, and his face fell. “I couldn’t bum those, though I bummed everything else.”
Captain Warder looked in from his stateroom a few feet away.
“What’s the excitement?” he asked.
“Take a look in here, Captain, if you want to see something pretty,” I said. Everyone moved aside so he could see the tree.
“My, my,” he said. He cocked his head to one side. “That certainly looks like the real thing. Who made it?”
Everyone looked at Sully. The red began to creep up his solid Irish face. “Aw,” he said finally, “four or five of us made it, Captain. I did the constructing, but I bummed stuff all over the boat.”
Then, suddenly encouraged: “Captain, is it all right if I take a picture of it?”
“Sure,” said Captain Warder, grinning. “We don’t want to miss that. Make some good ones while you’re at it.”
For the next ten minutes Sully perspired. He spread cotton batting about the base of the tree for snow. He made a little fireplace out of cardboard and stuck that behind the tree. He dashed to his bunk and came back with flood lights and camera, shouting directions. I had to hold a spot here; Zerk had to hold another there.
“For Christ sakes, Eck, keep your face out of this,” he shouted. “This is going to be pretty.”
He was standing up, crouching, sighting along his nose—the perfect picture of the demon stage director. Even Captain Warder got into the picture, sitting down at one side of the table, smiling, his hair neatly brushed to one side. Then half a dozen other fellows posed with the tree.
We liked that little Christmas tree. The men would look at it, and someone would say, “Jeez, isn’t that a pretty little thing,” and then you’d hear someone else’s voice, “Sure wish I was home tonight.”
Zerk and I walked back slowly to the control room. On the way we met John Street, laughing like a madman.
“What’s tickling you?” Zerk asked.
Street pointed to the after-engine room. We went in there. The noise of the Diesels was terrific, but everybody was standing around with pleased smiles. I went up to the nearest man standing at the throttle of No. 3 engine. I got right up to his ear.
“What tickled John Street so?” I yelled.
He pointed, too. I turned around, and there were two immense socks, four feet long. The foot alone was eighteen inches. One was bright red, the other white. They were made of bunting, and in those socks was the wildest collection of junk I’d ever seen in my life. A bunch of garlic; a twelve-inch Stilsen wrench; a can of oil; a pair of pink silk panties someone had got on some expedition of conquest; and on the socks were two Christmas tags.
One read, “From Mac to Snyder: Merry Christmas, I love you.”
The other read: “From Snyder to McCoy: Best Wishes for Continued Prosperity and Good Luck in the Coming Year. Be glad when you’re dead, you rascal, you.”
We got a kick out of that. When we finally got into the control room, for no reason at all Manila jumped into my head, and I said, “I wonder how many of the boats got out of Manila.”
Zerk, the supreme pessimist, sucked his pipe. “Damn few,” he said.
I bristled. Perhaps it was homesickness after the Christmas tree, or impatience, but I stood up and snapped at him. “For Christ sakes, you’re such a crepe-hanger somebody ought to punch you right in the face.”
Zerk looked up and grinned. “Well, that’s the way I see it,” he said.
I stomped out. I felt low. I went into the galley and poured myself a big mug of hot coffee. I sat over it and began thinking. We were doing all right. This first mission of ours was damn important from more than one point of view. Here were the Japs, oozing confidence out of every pore, completely sold on the plans of their High Command, converging on a dozen different points; and where they found opposition they swiftly overwhelmed it.
They were coming down, step by step, clutching at everything within reach, eager for the petroleum-rich lands below them. The Wolf’s first attack served notice to the Jap fleet that the United States wasn’t entirely caught off guard. Some units of the Asiatic Submarine fleet were still operating. The Japs simply couldn’t cruise into any cove or harbor and think themselves completely safe from us. We were around. And because we were around, and because they now knew we were around, they dared not send unescorted merchant shipping over unprotected sea lanes. They’d have to pull warships off important jobs and assign them to convoy duty. We were doing fine. What was I glum about?
It was nearly midnight now, and I should have hit the sack, but I still didn’t feel like sleep. Men were dropping into the galley, into Kelly’s Pool Room, and everybody I passed on the way out was saying, “Merry Christmas.” That warmed me up still more. I looked in on the radio shack. Snyder and Maley were in there, Snyder with the phones on, Maley bent over a book. Snyder saw me. He pushed his phones off his ears and said, “It’s sure noisy around here. I don’t know if I got anything here or not.”
“Why don’t you go aft and get some coffee?” I said. “I’ll take over.” He went out, and I slipped on the phones. Maley looked up, grunted, and went back to his reading.
It was noisy. We were close to shore, and I could hear the soft roar of the surf rolling up the beach. I listened hard. A distant, continuous echoing roar, like a seashell at your ear: that was the sound from the minute animal life clinging to the Seawolf’s keel. And then a backyard-like chattering—the merged sound of fish whistling, croaking, sighing. All these were the familiar sounds of the sea. I heard nothing suspicious.
I pushed off one earphone and turned to Maley. “Merry Christmas, kid,” I said. He looked up and smiled. “Merry Christmas, Eck,” he said, and went back to his reading.
Outside I heard the voice of Swede Enslin, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Deragon,” and then our exec’s mild, “Same to you, Swede.”
There was a lump in my throat. I had to swallow a few times, sitting there, thinking, Here it is Christmas, and Marjorie and Spike alone at home, not knowing if I’m dead or alive, and we’re off Corregidor, and men are dying in Bataan, and we don’t know if we’re going to be dead or alive ourselves twenty-four hours from now…
Maley started to whistle softly. He had a gift for whistling. I sat there listening with one ear, my other tuned to the familiar sounds of the water, and all at once I felt better. Maley whistled pretty notes; he trilled like a bird. Well, it was Christmas. Marjorie and the little fellow were O.K. They were in a good home; they had enough food and heat. I wondered what they were doing this very minute. I’d sent her some beautiful things I’d picked up—raw silk, bolts of cloth, even a Mohammedan kriss, to decorate our home. Did the ship carrying those gifts ever get through?