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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1995)
PAGE 13 P O R T O F CALL BY BUD HUTTON The Flying Dutchman came out of dirty weather around the Hom on the tail of a norther, picked up a good wind from almost dead astern that filled every sail, and began to reel off knots in the Pacific's long slow swell. The wnd was brisk and still held the chill of the Hom's ice floes as the Dutchman moved on a course almost into the setting sun, but almost overnight the weather turned tropical, and every man not on watch came on deck to soak up the sun. They gathered in little knots, forward and aft, and they should have been happy to bring their unend ing arguments up from belowlecks and dispute them in the warm breeze, but they weren't. For a while, Dewey and Sims tried to keep going their perennial debate wth Lawence and Jones over the merits of steam versus sail, and a few of the others paused to see vtfiether anyone had thought of something new on the subject. Once they sounded like old times vtfien Dewey made a point and Lawence hollered, "Don't give up the fight, Paul!" "Sir, I have not yet begun to argue," Jones answered, but his heart wasn't in it, and after a rebuttal of sorts, he was silent. Across the decks it was the same way. A couple of Roman admirals were arguing, as they always had, with two or three Carthaginians as to vtfiether the extra power of a quinque- reme's fifth bank of oars offset the added bulk and weight of that many more rowers and benches, but, as von Spee said caustic ally, those Mediterranean fellows lived so far in the past, nothing bothered them. Even on the quarterdeck, where Nelson had the watch, the feeling of uneasiness communicated itself. Ordinarily, old Nelson w)uld have all hands holystoning the decks or mending sail, in weather so fine, but today he turned his blind eye on the decks as he paced behind the helmsman. Once or twice he looked over the man's shoulder at the compass, saw they still held a course just north of due west, and shook his head in bafflement. Seated against a hatchway on the afterdeck, Jellicoe and Beatty tried for awhile to interest some of the others in a game of crowi- n-anchor, but no one wanted to play. A single German admiral stood stonily staring at the crown-'n-anchor board through his monocle. Ordinarily, lacking a game, Jellicoe and Beatty would have mentioned Jutland, just to hear the Ger man start spouting the statistics of tonnage lost by the opposing fleets and trying to prove it was really a victory for the Imperial Reich, nicht wahr? But today Jellicoe merely looked up and said, "Afternoon, Graf" because he had found it safe to call all those German chaps 'Graf' and went back to staring moodily over the rail. Inevitably, the glances of the men on the deck turned toward the admiral's cabin. The door remained shut, as it had since the voyage began. Sometimes they could hear him pacing the cabin, back and forth, but he had all his meals brought in by the steward and he hadn't once been on deck. Even the usually jaunty Drake was depressed by the vague uneasiness, the strange feeling of something unknown and ominous, which hung over the ship. Dewey and deGrasse watched him turn away from a figure at the taffrail and come over to them. "What do you hear, Frank?" Dewey asked. Drake shook his head. "No one seems to know a thing," he replied. "I even tried asking that chap back there. Japanese fellow who crossed the T on the Russians at Tsushima Strait. But he just looked politely at me and hissed something or other." Drake frowned at the figure by the taffrail. "Odd bloke, anyway. Can't even speak English." He sat dowi by Dewey and the Frer.ch admiral and watched the blue waters slip past. 'This is the queerest voyage yet," he said after a pause. "I've made plenty of them with the Old Man, but this one's differ ent. Spooky, actually." "Something is~howyou say it?-yes, rotten in Denmark," agreed deGrasse, hastily adding, "No offense, monsieur," as an old seadog from the Skagerrak turned at the words. "Davy wouldn't even let da Gama navigate, the way he usually does," Dewey pointed out. "I asked Vasco if he knew where we were going, but he swore he didn't know a thing." Drake pulled absently at his ear. 'There was the time he got us all out of the locker room and aboard the Dutchman to go watch that affair at Hampton Roads," he recalled. "You know, that Monitor-and-Merrimac business. Davy said that marked a turning point and he wanted us all there to wtness it. Of course, before we got Nelson wth us, we always had to go for a critique on his shows, and there were a couple more. Finally, there was that trip we made in peacetime, just after the war in 1914-18, you remember, to watch some fellow fly an airplane off a ship's deck. Astounding thing, that; Davy said it was a turning point, too." "Seems like every trip he's called us out of the locker room for was to watch some turning point or other,” Dewey pointed out. "Maybe this is one." "But there is no war now, messieurs," deGrasse inter posed. 'This last war is done, we know, and yet we sail into the Pacific, all of us with such a feeling on board ship as I never have known." "It's funny, all right, and the steward says the Old Man is acting like he's worried stiff, which just isn't like Davy Jones," put in Mahan, who had come up just in time to hear the last phrase. They all stood up and went about the change of the watch as eight bells tolled Never had the weather been so fair for a voyage of The Flying Dutchman; never had the spirits of the men aboard her been so low Once EricTheRed swore he had seen a black gull following them all through the sunrise watch, and every man aboard knew that was the worst possible luck. On the next day they caught rainy weather, and that night the watch reported they had passed a strange craft hove- to. Finally the weather cleared again, and one morning all hands came scrambling on deck at sunrise vtfien they heard the rumble of chains as the forward anchor was let go. onips! gaspea uavia rarragut as ne emerged into the sunlight. "Must be hundreds of ’em!" "Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, some of those new- fangled aircraft earners, barges, tugs, transports and freighters!" Jellicoe exclaimed "I say! Where in the world has Davy brought us this time?" "Submarines, too," dryly remarked Simon Lake, "and I can't tell for sure about them, but if you gentlemen w ll look closely, you'll notice as I have that there isn't a man to be seen on a single craft." The others looked. All across the huge fleet, which was anchored in a wide tropical lagoon, there wasn't a sign of human life. As they looked, they felt again the apprehension which had been wth them throughout the voyage. The clear bnght day seemed falsely bright, and a faint wnd in the ngging made a sad sound, like a violin playing far away Even Nelson shivered The old seamen drew together on the midship decking, as if to find comfort in the presence of one another and present a solid front to the unnamed and intangible sense of doom which permeated the whole craft. They were standing like that when the door of the admiral's cabin opened, and for the first time in the voyage, Davy Jones stepped on deck. They were shocked at his appearance. The grizzled, hearty seadog who had always seemed ageless to them looked tired, weary, as if he had not slept for nights. There was silence as old Davy’s glance moved across his men. For a moment his eyes shone wth pride, then they clouded again and his face set in the lines of the worry that was in him. Nelson broke the silence. "Begging the admiral's par don," he said, "but we'd like to know where we are, and what we're here for, wherever it is." There was a murmur of agreement from the admirals and captains around him. 'This hasn't been a happy ship this trip, Davy!" someone called from the crowd "Can you tell us why?" "As you all know," Davy Jones began, and the men fell silent under his words. "I've called you together for a voyage from time to time, one century or another, as the occasion demanded. This time — well, I've put off telling you as long as I could and —" A far-off drone interrupted him. All hands turned toward the seaward sky. "Airplane," snapped Sims, who knew about such things. "I’m not certain yet. I won't be for" -Davy took a quick squint at the sky— "for a minute or two But this, gentlemen, may be our last staff meeting." "What?" The word went up from half a dozen throats. "I'm not sure yet, mind you," the admiral went on, "but we'll —" He broke off, staring Everyone followed his gaze. Out of the hatchway scuttled a ship's rat. While they watched, he squeaked once, bared his long teeth, and wth a rush was over the rail and swimming for the shore. No one said a word. Davy Jones seemed to shrink inside his uniform. Wearily, almost with an air of resignation, he opened his mouth to speak again The sound of the ship's bell cut him short It tolled twice, and before the third stroke there came to the men on the deck the sound of a hundred other ships' bells, borne across the water on the breeze. One, two. three, four, five, six, seven — The seamen looked quickly at the sun. It was a scant four bells, yet the sound tolled on, and it was Farragut who first noticed and shouted that The Flying Dutchman's bell was tolling wth the rest, yet there was not a hand near it to strike clapper against bell. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve — And still they tolled. "Davy!" Paul Jones shouted. "No ship's bell tolls beyond eight bells! Davy, where are we? What is this?" The admiral held up a hand. Overhead, the drone of the airplane seemed to be swelling, growing louder even above the sound of the bells. 'We're in mid-Pacific!" Davy called, and he had to shout because the ringing of the bells seemed louder, and the drone in the sky had become a thunder, and, though the sails hung almost limp and the water was still, the breeze in the rigging seemed to have become a full-blown gale, shrieking through the stays and whipping his wards from his mouth 'We're in mid-Pacific!" Davy repeated "A place called Bikini Atoll! We've come — we're here to see if they'll need us anymore!" With the last sound of his voice, the roar of the wind grew to a wild, unending scream. The sound of aircraft engines beat and throbbed at their eardrums, and all across the lagoon of Bikini Atoll the bells of the ships went on tolling vtfiile the men of The Flying Dutchman looked to the high sky where an object had detached itself from a plane and was falling toward them Port of Call was originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947. The first nuclear test at Bikini Atoll took place the previous year, on June 30, 1946. The fourth atomic bomb was dropped on a guinea pig fleet of 73 warships in Bikini lagoon. Cannon Beach
