Terry Bindle

by JOSEPH WHITEHILL

TERRY BINDLE, Able’s wiper this forenoon watch, leaned against the main engine guardrail jigging one shoe and watching his Chief s placid stitching. Terry, a pale, slender boy in grubby dungarees which bagged at the knees and seat, seemed beset by an impatient anguish. He gestured and twitched; he started away from the rail, then hesitated. Then he lost his self-restraint all at once and bent over Able and jabbed with his finger at Abie’s work and shouted over the roar of the Main, “Chief, whadda you do stuff like that for?”

Able raised his head slowly and blinked at Terry through the circular lenses of his steel-rimmed spectacles. “Sav what, boy?” Full-fleshed and elderly, Chief Engineer Baker was still a well-made man; his short, dark gray hair lay close about his big head like the stone hair of Creek statues. Tiny purple veins sported in his pink cheeks, giving him that “drunkard’s face" which so commonly afflicts the man in his maturity who drinks little or not at all.

“All the time making things,” Terry Bindle cried, screw ing up his face.

Able looked down at the workpiece in his lap while he deliberated; then he heaved himself out of his canvas chair. This ear-plugging thunder of the main engine was too much to converse over. So he led the way forward inlo the quieter machine shop and rolled the fire door shut behind them.

Holding up what he had been working on, he said, “This here’s a gallon Coke syrup jug, you see. I gol it in the galley yesterday.”

“Sure. but. — ”

Able Baker silenced the boy with a long, slow blink. “Now, you see here? I’ve sewed a double layer of old blanket all around it — pulled it nice and tight. Old blankets makegood padding. Now I‘m sewing on 1 his duck outside the blanket stull to protect it. There. That way. That’s the way it’ll be.” Able smoothed the canvas over the woolen jug-boot with his knowing, gentle hands.

“Sure! O-kay! But what’s it for? Who’s gonna use it ?”

“Fse it? What’s it for?” Able shook the bottle slightly, as though prompting the bottle to answer for itself. “Well . . . you can always use a padded bottle for something.” It now became clear to Able that he would have to begin farther back with this boy. “You mean, why do I make things I don’t need right now ?”

“Yeah. I mean for two months, ever since I come aboard, I seen you make all kinda things and then just put ‘em away or give em away and not even care! ” Terry said, twitching with adolescent tension.

“It’s to keep me from fidgeting, Able said baldly. (Terry stilled himself.) “Like this, for example. Here’s how the days go. We run in to Chilung harbor back there at Formosa to wait out a typhoon. We anchor. We secure t he main engine. We change injection nozzles. We blow out the crank lube lines. We strip the water from the fuel filters. We clean things up all around. And then we sit. We sit for three days and then they say prepare for sea. So wo hurry around running up ihe air tank and starting oil pumps and charring new glow starlers and we get the Main running and we put power on the anchor windlass and they get the anchor in and we take power off the anchor windlass, and then we go up speeds on the Main till we’re clear of the jetty and the reefs; then we hang her on one-seventy engine turns and leave her there. And then we sit some more.” Able paused for breath. “A man needs to fee! useful in the silting times. That’s all.”

“Oh. Well. Nice — uh — nice bottle.”

“Thank you. . . . Where are you supposed to be right now?”

Terry looked scared. “What, Chief? What?”

“The shaft alley, boy. The shaft alley. When are you going to begin remembering?” Able slid the door open on the noise of the engine room and kindly shoved Terry through. He watched as the boy grabbed a squirt can, fished out his wiping cloth, and ducked through the tiny door abaft the main engine; then Able went back to his seat in the cool wind from the overhead ventilator duct and began again to sew.

2

ABLE was experimenting with a new tool he had bought two weeks earlier from a British Army cobbler in Singapore. It was a stitching awl, a lool of leatherworkers. It carried inside its wooden handle a bobbin of five-cord linen thread, and on the other end it had a needle like that of a sewing machine, with the eye down near the point. It was thus needle, palm, and thread all in one tool, and it made a closed lockst itch like a machine’s. Able soon was lost in that amnesic reverie which attends men engaged in pleasantly monotonous, self-put tasks. To him, absorbed as he was in learning the new motions the new tool needed, it seemed only a moment before Terry was suddenly back.

The boy leaped screaming out of the low entrance to the shaft alley and ran skidding on the oily deck plates to Able and stood before him jumping up and down and babbling wildly. Abie’s head fell back and he stared; then he carefully set aside his work and stood up and planted his big hands on the boy’s shoulders to anchor him. “What is it?” Able asked, shaking Terry gently. He feared to shake him too hard, lest the boy had been hurt in some way in the shaft alley.

“Chief! Chief!” Terry cried, squirming under ihc bigger man’s grip and flailing his arms in the direction of the shaft alley. “Gotta get outa here! Gotta get topside! Ring the howler, Chief! Let — me — go! ”

Able, deciding now that Terry had not been hurt, gave the boy a wrench that rolled his eyes up out of sight briefly; then Able asked again, “What is it, Terry?”

Terry’s voice was a lost wail:“CIIIE-EEF! THE PROPELLER’S COMIX’ OFF! IT’S COMIN’ OFF AN’ BATIN’ A HOLE IN TIIE BOTTOM!”

Able spun the helpless, terror-struck boy around and pushed him ahead into the shaft alley. When they were inside, stooping low in the narrow, brightly lighted tunnel, Able swung the engineroom door shut behind them. Then he could hear the noise. Overriding the usual sound of the drive system — the squishy hiss of the shaft journals — was a strident, rhythmic clang-scrape, clang-scrape which echoed loudly down through the tubular compartment.

Prodding Terry ahead of him. Able hurried aft, avoiding the foot-thick spinning shaft, and feeling each bearing as he passed it with ihe palm of his hand, out of old, unconscious habit.

At the after end of the shaft alley, where it narrowed and where the tail shaft disappeared into the dripping stuffing box, the awful new noise did sound like the end of the ship; CLANG-SCRAPE, CLANG-SCRAPE, all in an ear-killing racket . Able had heard enough. He smacked the trembling boy sharply on the shoulder blade, turned and lumbered crouching and bearlike back the way they had come, with Terry close behind.

Able straightened up in the roaring engine room and hurried to the communicator handset hanging on the bulkhead by the stand-up log desk. He pushed the button marked Bridge thrice quickly and stoppered his off ear with his forefinger.

“Bridge” came down the thin voice.

“Bridge—Engine Room. That you, Henry?” Abie’s breath was coming fast, and his blunt fingers were aimlessly exploring the damp hair over his car.

“Yes?” the First Mate said.

“We’re into some trouble with the propeller, Henry.” Able spoke rapidly: “Request permission to drop a hundred turns off the Main, and you or the Captain better get on down here.”

The handset was saying “Very w — ” when Able hung it, up on his way across to the throttle. He drew the brass handle down slowly, watching the tachometer on the gage board, until the slim needle steadied on 70 rpm. The engine room quieted greatly when the Main slowed. As Able turned abruptly away, he collided with Terry and sent him spraw ling to the deck. Able paused and looked down at him soberly a moment, and then said loudly, “You just stay there.” He stepped over the obedient boy, rounded the main engine, and ducked into the shaft alley again. He closed the door and cupped his ears aft. He fell some relief to hear that the strange noise had slowed, and had softened to a metallic brushing sound.

Able went back to the log desk and presently wrote in his square-rigged Palmer script; “Trouble with propeller.” He tugged out his big pocket watch and looked at it, then resumed: “1019 — Called Bridge. Dropped Main to 70 rpm.”

While Able was blotting his sweaty face and neck with his bandanna, his eyes met those of Terry Bindle. The boy was still sitting sadly on the deck where Able had, so to speak, stationed him. Able beckoned to him and led him into the quieter machine shop; and after rolling the door shut, he took a deep and wheezy breath and said with sententious anger, “ Now, Mister Terry Bindle, let’s begin at the beginning. The first thing you don’t do when you find something’s gone wrong is, you don’t get sprained wits and begin hunting for your life jacket. For alt you know, that propeller’s been sounding like that for three hours, ever since the morning watch last checked the shaft alley. Just because the trouble is brand-new to you doesn’t make it new to the ship. So don’t get so flustered. And the second thing to do is use your head. If that propeller was coming off as you say, it’d be wobbling on the taper at the end of the tail shaft, and the wobble outside would whip that shaft in the alley like it was made out of rubber. Which that shaft isn’t, so the propeller isn’t falling off.”’Perry Bindle was draped over the bedways of the lathe, dallying with the cross-slide ball crank and looking foolish. Much as Able loved this boy, it seemed to him that Terry was forever leaning on something. “Straighten up, lad! . . . No, there must be something fouled on the propeller —

The door to the machine shop slid aside and Captain West chafer (called “Cockroach" by the crew) and Henry, the First Mate, entered. The Captain said, “So here you are!" Terry Bindle shrank around to the other side of the lathe at the sight of all this authority. The Captain, a thin dry man with a bristly little mustache, asked blandly, “Well, Able? What’s all this?”

“We picked up something with the propeller, I think. Captain,” Able said. “Something’s fouled it and it beats on the hull every revolution.”

The Captain raised his eyebrows, exposing more of his windshot eyes. “How could that be? I was on the bridge myself.”

Well, you old fool. Able thought.

The Captain may suddenly have thought so too, for he changed course abruptly. He said, “I want to hear it.”

Able said, “You two go on back in the alley and listen, and I’ll run up the Main some so you can hear it.”The Captain and the Mate, rightly obedient to Abie’s hegemony down here, filed into the shaft alley. When he thought he had given them enough time to reach the alter end, Able advanced the throttle. He held it until the Main came up to speed and steadied there for a few seconds; then he retarded it again.

The Captain bounded out of the shaft alley with the jerky movements of a furious man. He came over to Able and blew out his pneumatic cheeks and shouted, “Of all the damn damn luck, sir!” He spoke over his shoulder to the Mate: “Cose four days in that rat hole of a harbor in Formosa waiting for a typhoon to make up its stupid mind, and now his! ” He faced Able again. “How fast can you run it, Able?”

“I wouldn’t go any faster than we are right now, Captain. About seventy engine turns. Any fasterand we might beat a hole in the hull. Seventy turns’ll give you about five-six knots, maybe. Uh — it’s in your Turns-to-Knots tables — on the bridge.”

“Thank you, Mister Baker,”the Captain said with thick sarcasm. “ I never would have guessed.”He turned to the quiet Mate. “Well, what d’you say?”

The Mate looked down at his shoes, took off his salty officer’s hat and scratched the part in his hair with his little-finger nail, and said, “Looks like we’ll have to dive for it, Captain.”

“At sea, Mister?”

“No, Captain. We’ll have to put in at Okinawa. About ninety miles east or so.”

“Yes,” the Captain said. “That’s just what I would do myself. Lose another two days at six hundred dollars a day.”

“There isn’t any other way,”the Mate said, looking directly at the Captain.

“Very well,” the Captain said, and he fired himself across the engine room and started up the steel ladder. The First Mate followed his superior briskly, with agile, practiced closeness.

Able, with his lips moving silently, stood at the foot of the ladder looking upward, watching the ascending bottoms above him sway from side to side in their khaki pants. “Well, just damn the Deck anyway,” he said with soft petulance. He found Terry Bindle in the machine shop, occupying himself with raking curly bronze chips out from beneath the ways of the lathe, and said to him, “Terry, my boy, you write up the log this hour.

I have to think.” The boy smiled for the first time that morning, and nodded. Able carried his flapping gallon jug back to the canvas chair, paused a studied moment to break wind, and sat down.

3

AFTER noon mess that day, Able Baker, still bearing his jug, came out on the main deck and turned slowly around twice to mark the directions of wind and sun; then he went aft to the poop and sat down thereon a faked-out hawser where he could lean his back against a bill and be out of the wind but in the sun. He put his heavy legs out straight and crossed them, and began drawing a length of thread through his ball of beeswax. So warm and big was the smile that filled him over the outcome of Officers’ Mess that a little of it escaped at his lips, and he began bumping his way through the melody of Waltzing Matilda.

He had worn out the tune, and had added four inches of fair, tight seam to his work, when he looked up to find his wiper, Terry Bindle, standing beside him. “Excuse me, Chief. Uh—hi. Chief. He was dangling a bucket of soap powder from his hand, twirling it by the bail. “I — uh — I had to come up an’ get some more soogee, an’ the other guys ast me to look you up an’ get the scoop on this course change an’ all. Find out what’s going on, sort of.”

Able waved to a place on the hawser beside him. “Sit down, Terry boy, sit down. I was going to see you later anyway. That’s right. Right there.”Terry sat down gingerly, as if warily weighing the meaning of Abie’s sudden warmth. Able resumed his work with the stitching awl, saying, “That was quite a lunch at Officers’ Mess, Terry. Quite a lunch indeed. There were a lot of what you might call hard feelings going around in the Deck Department.”Abie’s stomach heaved with a chuckle. “Soon as we were all sat down at table, in comes the Captain very angry, so of course we all get up again. Out of respect, you know.

“Well, the Captain, he sits down with never a word, and he stares around at everybody, and nobody dast say anything at all, you know, and then by and by he says, ‘Gentlemen, 1 suppose you all know what’s happened now.' Sparks, he was in the sack all morning and missed everything, so he shakes his head like a damn fool, and the Captain says to him, ‘Well, gentlemen, somehow out here free and clear in the East Chinee Sea, with eight hundred fathom more or less under us and the nearest land ninety mile off east, somehow this good luck ship has gone and got her propeller fouled with Hotsam.’

“Right then,” Able went on with relish, “the Third Mate chooses to spill his water all over the tablecloth, so the Captain, he looks over at him and he goes on, ‘That is, it must have been flotsam. I say it must have been flotsam even though I myself was on the bridge this morning, and I didn’t see anything— nothing at all. It must have been flotsam because I am certain that no one in my deck force would heave anything overboard from up forward, where it might run back and foul the propeller!' And then he stares at the Third some more, and the Third starts talking low to his left and his right, and then he looks at the Captain and he says, ‘Well, now, Captain, I’m afraid I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.'

“And the Captain bears down with his eyes and he says, ‘What do you mean, sir?’ And the Third, he ahems a few times and then he says, ‘Well, sir, there was this rusty old cargo bridle up in fore stores, sort of a barrel sling it used to be; it was too far gone for greasing again — wasn’t safe any more, if you see what I mean — so I told Ikky and George to haul it aft and give it the deep six.'

“And the Captain’s eyebrows go right up into his hair and he says, ‘Oh, you told Ikky and George to haul it aft did you? Mister Mate, did you tell those knuckleheads how far aft?’ And the Third says, ‘Well, no sir. I thought they knew.'”

Able shook his head seriously. “The Third has worked too long amongst baboon intelligences to make a mistake like that. Poor Ikky, he’s all right when you remember he’s honestly pretty feebleminded, but George! George is a plain smart-aleck fool. He couldn’t pour bilge out of a boot if the directions were on the heel. Did you ever hear what George did, oh, three-four months ago, before you came aboard, Terry?”

The boy shook his head and shifted edgily on the hawser, as though he could not make out the real drift of Abie’s long and egalitarian gam with him.

Able resumed, “Well, this George, he had the midwatch one night, lookout up forward on the fo’c’sle deck, and there was a strong beam wind blowing. He thought he could get away with this, you sec, on account of the wind and all, so instead of hollering ‘The lights are burning bright, sir!’ as he was supposed to do, he sung out, ‘I’d like to screw your wife, sir!’ and right then the wind lulled away down and the First Mate heard him exactly and clearly from back on the bridge. Well! After the sand had all settled down again, George was stuck with the midwatch for a month, until he’d turned in to the First Mate THE LIGHTS ARE BURNING BRIGHT, SIR written out two thousand times. So George griped about how unjustly he’d been treated and he went to the Port Commissioner at Singapore and told him about it and the Port Commissioner said if he’d been on the bridge it would have been ten thousand times.” Able paused to chuckle, then presently added reflectively “But, considering that George can only barely write at all, maybe he did get it a little still’. Still, he was a bad, bad sport about it.”

4

ABLE threaded his awl needle again, a process which called for a good deal of peering and headtilting and groping for the right focus range. “ Where was I? Oh yes. So anyway then the Captain says to the Third Mate, ‘Very well, sir. Since it’s your barrel sling that’s wrapped around the screw, you have a diver ready at nine hundred tomorrow morning 1=to go over the side after it.’ And the Third, he throws up his hands like this and says, “Diver! Oh, no, Captain. Ain’t any of my boys can swim, let alone dire!’ So the Captain gives the Third a look that shoves his License Examination six months farther off, and he looks around the table at the rest of us. Everybody but me is facedown in his food.

“So the Captain looks at me, Terry. (I’ve been waiting for this, you understand.) ‘Well, Mister Baker?’ he says to me. ‘Well, Captain,’ says I, ‘far be it. from me to criticize the Deck for not having any swimmers. It just seems odd, is all. You see, we in Engineering have taken some pains to see that every one of the snipes is a good swimmer.’ Now, right here all three of the Mates turn red. They just hate to get caught out, Terry.”

Able Baker hugged his arms about his stomach and rocked forward in pure joy. Terry, very silent, was looking at Able’s padded gallon jug. Able noticed. “You want to see that, lad? Here. Look her over a while. Let’s see, now . . .” Able stared up at the truck of the signal mast high overhead. “So then — so then I say, ‘Don’t you worry, Captain. I have a diver. He’s young,’I say, ‘but he’s a good diver.’ And the Captain says, ‘Who is it?’ and I say, ‘Why, it’s my wiper, Terry Bindle.’” Able took a small breath and held it; then, after an empty pause, he peeped at Terry over the edge of his spectacles.

The boy had turned paler than his normal engineroom pallor; he squinted and his lips moved. He carefully set aside Abie’s jug and rose sway ing to his feet. He walked bemused to the bulwark and climbed completely over it and stood on the edge of the sheer strap outside, holding on to the cuprail and looking down at the sudsy water rolling swiftly past the stern run of the ship.

Able was unprepared for this. He got up as quickly as his stiff legs would allow and went to the rail too, and inoffensively took hold of the slack in the seat of Terry’s dungarees. “What is it, lad?" Able asked softly.

“I think I’ll drown myself,”Terry said in a weak liquid voice. “I’ll drown myself out here right now in the nice sunshine. I ain’t gonna wait for tomorrow to get drownded down on the end of a hose!”

Able, slightly frightened, sucked his plump underlip and wondered whether anyone was watching this tableau. Then he decided it did not matter whether anyone was or not; with his free hand he caught the boy by the shoulder and with one swift wrench levered him back over the bulwark into the safety of the ship once more. Then he sat on him. “Now you just listen to me a minute,” Able began angrily, but the sight of Terry’s tears melted him inside. He got off the fallen boy, saying, “Now you just sit there a minute and listen to me.”

Terry sobbed haltingly, “Sure, Chief, sure! I’ll listen — to you all you want. You do—talk a lot, but I’ll listen. But I ain’t gonna — dive!”

Able, though inwardly offended by Terry’s allusion to his loquacity, remained unruffled as he continued, “Now give me credit for some sense, Terry. D’you think I’d send you down if there was somebody else better qualified? No, of course not. But there isn’t. You can swim fine. I’ve seen you jump in from clear up here. And swimming is almost all there is to it. All you need now is a little practice with the mask and the breather, and you’ll do perfectly fine! . . . That’s all you need. You’re a born mechanic, Terry—the best wiper I’ve had in a long, long time. It’s a mechanic has to go down there on that propeller, not a moron deck ape!”

Terry’s tears were coming freely now. He was on his stomach with his elbows propping him up and his head hanging low, snuffling loudly. “Chief . . .

Chief, I ain’t any diver. I ain’t any mechanic even,” he blubbered. “You say that all the time, ‘ton say how stupid I am and how I never learn anything right, and it’s true. I don’t. I’m a dummy an’ I wish I’d never come to sea.”

“Terry, Terry,” Able said softly, putting his hand on the back of the boy’s neck and gripping it firmly. “You don’t understand. You’ve got it all wrong, lad. Down there in the engine room when I call you stupid, that’s sort of just to let you know you aren’t perfect yet, and there’s still room for improvement. When I call you stupid, I don’t mean you’re stupid. Y’ou’ll never be stupid like a deck ape.” Able sighed gustily. “Lord, boy, everybody makes mistakes. Don’t think I don’t make my share too!” Able paused, noting that the sobs had slowed down. “Terry, just think of it! Y ou’re an engineer! You’re the one keeps the ship going. And when the ship gets in trouble and the Captain doesn’t know what to do, why, it’s the engineers he turns to. And just think this over, too; if the Captain had to radio for a diver to come down from Tokyo, d’you have any idea what it would cost? We’d be laid up there at Okinawa four days anyway; that’s twenty-four hundred dollars. Then the diver’s fee and his passage both ways, that’s another thousand dollars; why, Terry, you’re worth thirty-four hundred dollars to the Captain!”

Terry’s sobs had stopped (whether because Terry was listening or because sobs always stop after a time, Able was not sure), and Able continued warmly, “And just think, Terry. When you’re over the side there, the whole ship will turn out. Even the baker won’t miss it, and he never gets up before noon for anything. Everybody’ll be at the rail watching — watching the engineers — watching you — get ihe ship ready for sea again. All by yourself.”

Terry lifted his head and blew his nose on the sleeve of his greasy chambray shirt. “Old Cockroach wants a diver at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Chief. I couldn’t practice before then any way. I can’t do it, Chief.”

Able rolled over to his hands and knees, then stood up. “You let me worry about that. I’ll think of something.” Terry got up too. “You get on back down there with your soogee. I’ll think of something. You meet me up forward by the booby hatch tonight after chow. Now get going.”

Terry scrubbed his eyes firmly on his shirt shoulder, drew a deep and calming breath, and departed wailing, “It ain’t any good, Chief! It ain’t any good! ”

5

AT TEN o’clock that warm dark night Chief Engineer Able Baker was thanking the sea for being flat calm. Well forward in the ship and twenty feet below the main deck, the busy, sweating man was standing straddle-legged on the great hatch of Number One Deep Tank, vigorously working the long vertical handle of the air pump back and forth, while trying at the same time to peer down into the dim brown light which came up through the manhole beside him. Had the sea been rough tonight, Able would not have dared open that manhole; tons of salt-water ballast would have surged out with the roll of the ship and flooded the deck of the gloomy hold in which he stood.

Able and Terry, struggling silently in the dark with the bulk of the two-cylinder bronze air pump, had lowered it on a burton and planted it by the manhole in the Deep Tank hatch; then they had rigged a light through the manhole to illuminate the watery interior of the compartment below. Able had shown the naked boy how to spit in the mask to keep the glass plate from fogging and how to bite the rubber mouthpiece of the respirator, and had then driven him with threats and enthusiasm down the ladder into the water.

Ten minutes of this strenuous pumping nearly exhausted Able; his shoulders were commencing to cramp. Mercifully, the boy just then hove into view, his white body silvered with a hoar of bubbles, trailing a pulsing stream of exhaust air from the check valve at the nape of his neck. Terry found the ladder and climbed up through the manhole and stripped off his mask and respirator. His body was streaked with rusty slime and he was trembling. “Wow!” he panted. “ Wow-de-dow-dow-dow!”

“What?” Able asked, shrugging out the cramps in his shoulders.

Terry grinned. “That’s real spooky down there . . . but it’s . . . not so bad.”

“What’d I tell you? Get your clothes on, you’ll catch cold. Remind me tomorrow morning to get some mineral oil from the medicine chest. That pump leaks at the leathers. You can’t use anything but a little pure mineral oil in these pumps. You go and use regular oil or grease on the valves and leathers, and you know what? You start pumping oil vapor down to the diver and make him sick.”

Terry had dressed. “We gonna haul this rig back topsides again now?”

“Us? Don’t be silly. We’ll let the deck apes do it tomorrow.”

The ship made land later in the night, passing safely through the difficult tide race at the harbor entrance, and anchored in Buckner Bay. Able had been spared the ugly chore of turning out with the anchor detail to manage the securing-for-port of the engine room, and had slept heavily and late.

At eight o’clock he found Henry, the First Mate, finishing his breakfast in the saloon, and sat to take his coffee beside him. “What d’you need, Able?” the First Mate asked.

Able gave his glasses their morning cleaning on a napkin. “Well, Henry, first I want the small boat over the side, frapped around under the counter where it’ll be handy to the propeller. We’ll pump from there. Oh, and you’d better put over one of those balsa life rafts, too. We’ll float that between the small boat and the hull sort of as a fender, and to give the boy something to hang on to if he wants it. And let’s see. . . . Oh, I want those two fine seamen of yours, George and Ikky, I want them to go down in Number One Hold and bring up the diving rig and put it in the small boat, just forward of the boat’s engine, and secure it there. If you don’t mind, I think it’d do them good to do the pumping for the lad.”

Henry swabbed around on his plate with a bit of toast to clean up the ruptured egg yolk, then popped it into his mouth. He did not look at Able as he nodded. Able went on: “And we’ll need a hundred feet of one-inch manila ready; we’re going 1o try to unwind that cable by hauling from up on deck.”

“That all?” Henry asked sourly.

“Yes. . . . Well, no. No, there’s one more little thing. A personal favor. When that cable comes off the propeller and comes up to the deck, and when Terry gets out of the water, I d like it if you’d lead the rest of them in a hand of applause for him. He’d like that. It’d mean a lot to him.”

Henry scowled and jammed on his limp officer’s hat. “What d’you want, Able, blood? Even General Grant let the Rebels keep their horses.”

Able shrugged. “It’s just a personal favor. Never mind. Don’t do it if you don’t want to. I just thought Terry would appreciate it, is all. Skip it.”

The First Mate rose from the table and said, “ Wel-1-11, God damn!” and left the saloon.

Chief Engineer Able Baker grinned mightily into his coffee mug.

6

TERRY’S final briefing took place a liltle later in the machine shop. Able showed him how to bind in his dungaree trouser-legs tightly with marline, to prevent their flapping and snagging something under water. Then he said, “All set?”

Terry’s head twitched nervously. “Yes. I guess so. No! Did you oil that pump?”

Able patted his skinny shoulder. “I oiled the pump all right. It works just fine now.” Able led the way out of the machine shop and over to the ladder; then he paused and turned back to the main electrical distribution panel. With a pair of red fiber pliers he extracted two cartridge fuses from a block on the panel and put them in his pocket.

“What’d you do then, Chief?”

“Jerked the fuses in the main engine starter circuit. I don’t want anybody starting up the Main with you under the stern.”

“Wow,” Terry breathed, and started up the ladder.

On deck everything was ready. Able looked around at the barren, mountainous shore of the bay where they had anchored, and he looked down over the counter at the milky green water below, He patted Terry on the bottom, starting him over the bulwark and down the Jacob’s ladder toward the small boat below. The boat was straining at its mooring lines. “That’s rather some current down there,” Able said to the First Mate, who was standing nearby, a little apart from the crowd of ship’s company who had gathered here on the stern to watch the diving.

The First Mate said, “It is. There’s always current in here. The whole place is too shallow.”

Able, with the circumspect ness of the elderly, hoisted himself carefully over ihe bulwark and descended the rattly swaying ladder. Down in the small boat, as he tucked in his disarranged shirt, he said coldly to the two sheepish ordinaries, “Boys, when I say pump, you pump. And you keep pumping till I say belay. I’ II mark your time by the numbers.” To Terry he said, “Get in the raft, and then in the water from there. Get your face and head wet. I’m right behind you.”Able pulled off his shoes and followed the boy into the life raft and kneeled on its wet, wood-slatted bottom.

Terry was in the water and hanging on to the edge of the raft. He said, “ Looka, Chief. Looka how my legs swing out. There’s a current in here.”

“Of course there’s a current in here. Tides, you know If it’s too stiff we’ll have to wait. If you can swim against it, it II be all right. Ready?”

Terry sighed. “Okay, I guess.

“You two,” Able said to the ordinaries, “pump! Ah-one and ah-two and ah-three; ah-one and ahtwo and ah-three! Smartly there!” Air came hissing from the respirator mouthpiece in Abie’s hand. Terry’s face was pale and small behind the glass of the diving mask. Able settled the yoke of corrugated hoses over the boy’s head, and the boy bit onto the mouthpiece. “Now go!” Able said. The boy pushed off and dived and swam out of sight under the stern, disappearing around the great brown shadow-shape of the rudder. Able found himself empathetically holding his breath as he listened to the sucking clatter of the air pump intake valves and watched the rising bubble stream.

The boy was gone less than a minute; he returned in sight and surfaced at the raft by Able. The seamen, absorbed with watching, stopped pumping. Terry choked and had to spit out the mouthpiece and pant for breath. Able shouted, “I said pump, you goddam dough brains! ” The pumping was hastily resumed. “How is it, boy ?" he asked Terry.

Terry pushed the mask up onto his forehead. “It’s easy, it looks like. There’s — there’s an old rusty cable wrapped around the outside of — of the bearing — in from of the propeller.

“The boss, you mean.'”

“Yeah, the boss. Well, there’s four-five turns around this here boss, and the end is sort of bangin’ out loose in the water. There’s a big shiny spot on ihe hull up above the propeller where that end’s been beating. . . . Gee, Chief, that prop’s a monstrous big thing! . . . Gimme that line there, Chief.”

Able handed Terry the end of the manila line. “How’s the currentt“

“It’s stiff, all right. You gotta swim into her all the time. But it’s not loo bad.”

“You sure? All right, then. You take this line down and bend it onto the end of the cable. Use a beckel bend like I showed you.”

Terry went under again, towing the manila line behind him. Able fed it lightly through his fingers as the boy drew it out, feeling the numerous small jerks on it as the boy worked at the other end. Then the remote activity stopped and presently Terry reappeared and surfaced among roiling bubbles. He clung to the edge of the raft breathing hard, resting the side of his head on his arm.

Able put his head down close to Terry’s and examined his face intently. Then he asked, You all right, boy? What’s wrong?”

“Xu-nu-nothin’. I made a mistake, is all. I looked straight down under me. There’s nothing there. The biggest chunk of nothing I ever seen before. Just green going down forever.”

“Didn’t you ever look up at the sky? It’s the same nothing.”

“Sure, but you can’t fall up into the sky.”

“Oh. . . . Did you gel the fine bent on?”

“ I think it’ll stay. That wire is hard to bend in a close bight. You better have ‘em lead their end on deck farther forward. ‘File wire’ll unroll easier from there. . . . Gee, just look at all those faces up t here! ”

“Don’t mind the faces. Able said shortly; then he called to the deck, “Lead your end forward twenty feet and take an even strain!”

The men on deck did so. When the manila fine came taut slanting forward and the men stood waiting, Able called, “Haul gently now.”They hauled, and the line ascended jerkily, flinging drops of water darkly against the chalky gray paint of the hull as it came. The frayed and rusty end of the wire cable appeared. Then the ascent stopped, and as the men hauled harder the will-made beckct bend revolved once. “’Vast hauling!" Able called. “Veer your line two feet and haul again! “The fine came slack, untwisting, then grew tight again. About three new feet of wire cable were gained before it fouled. Repeated veerings and haulings brought in no more cable.

Able called, “’Vast hauling and give us some slack!" Then he said to the silent boy. “You’ll have to go down again. It’s got hung up on something.”

The boy licked his lips, which were beginning to get somewhat blue, and cleared his teeth in the nervous simulacrum of a grin. He settled the mask on his face, accepted the mouthpiece, and went under.

“Pump, goddam it!” Able cried angrily. The seamen, who were already pumping at the time, looked seriously over the pump lever at each other and began pumping a little faster. Able stared down into that big green nothing where his lad was, someplace. Even in the cool shade here under the stern. Able was sweating freely.

Three minutes later one of the pumping seamen called in a confounded voice, “Say, Chief, there’s his breather afloat in’ away off there an’ bubblin’ without him in it!” And before Abie’s very eyes a relaxed shape drifted into sight a little below the surface of the water. Abie’s arm drove down and caught the boy’s shirt just as he was about to disappear beneath the small boat.

Two hours later the ship was at sea again, rolling easily and alive. Able Baker, as soon as he decently could, had left the engine room in the care of an oiler and had climbed to the ship’s hospital to be with Terry. The boy in the bunk was deeply buried in a nest of white blankets and towel-wrapped hotwater bottles.

Able sat by the bunk nervously squeezing drops of sea water from the cuffs of his khaki trousers. 11 is voice was close to a wretched whine when he said, “Terry, I knew something was wrong when you came up the second time. Why in heaven’s name didn’t you say the propeller was turning over down there?”

To Able, the boy’s voice was surprisingly strong: “I don’ know. I didn’t want to make a kiddy fuss, I guess. It wasn’t turning fast.”

Able shook his head slowly, feeling the twisting of his saddened soul “Oh, I’m sorry, boy ... I can’t tell you how sorry I am. ... I should have thought ... I should have known . . .” The current. “Of course a current like that would roll an unlocked propeller over. . . . And I — and I was worried so about somebody maybe starting the Main that I forgot all about the current outside.”

“It’s all right, Chief. You didn’t even know about it till we got up on deck.”

“It was all my fault,” Able said in a small voice. After a silent pause while he thought on this, he smiled a little. “But Terry, you should have heard them. Everything was so quiet while you were lying there on the thwart of the small boat, and then all at once you moved, and right at the same time the wire cable came free and swung out into sight in the current. How they did cheer then! And how they clapped! Why, I’ll bet the gooks heard it ashore. You should have heard them cheer, Terry.”

The boy in the bunk grinned. “Did they really, Chief? I thought 1 heard something, but there were other noises in my head at the same time.”

Able said, “Ah, it was a fine moment, Terry. The whole deck force cheering for an engineer. . . . Well.” Able rose to go, steadying himself on the keeper rail of the boy’s bunk. “ 1 ‘ll tell you a secret. I ‘ll tell you a new joke on me, Terry. When we t ried to start the Main just now, it wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t even turn over. I called Ears a knucklehead oiler and sent him off to read his starting manual again. And it wasn’t till then I remembered I still had those fuses in my pocket! I stuck them back in place when Lars wasn’t looking, and of course then the Main wound right up and started. Lars thinks I’m a magician.” Able went to the door filled with thanks for the blessed gift that was Terry’s weak laughter. At the door he said, “Oh — I almost forgot. Here. See here? This is for you. I want you to have it, Terry.” Able held up the glass gallon jug he had labored so patiently to finish. The canvas cover around it was drawn taut now, and neatly stitched at the seams.

Terry’s eyes were closed. “Well,” Able said choking, “you — you lie still and rest now, and I’ll be up to see you later.” Then Able left, sniffling a little, and went to his own cabin to be alone with his fatigue.