Jonah Watch by Jack; Cady Read Free Book Online Page A

made lonely by the dying summer—was constructing a new hero.
    "All hands belowdecks must memorize these diagrams," Snow told Howard. "Work with great care."
    "It's the only way you can work, when you don't know what you're doing."
    "You are receiving a large favor," Snow told him. "Few quill-drivers ever learn how to draft."
    With Adrian on standby, the crew found itself testy after a summer of inaction. Men grumbled that since they could not go ashore it was foolish to hang against the pier. They muttered against the judgment of First District Operations as they followed the steadily increasing troubles of cutter Abner .
    "Levere already asked," radioman James told an assembly on the messdeck. "Operations won't give us a proceed-and-assist." To Lamp he said, "I thought Abner was supposed to be lucky."
    "The sea's not running hard, boys."
    "That's blamed small luck."
    "It's touchy, boys. It's touchy. Don't think bad thoughts."
    Across the pier, and on the seaward side, where the familiar shape of Abner had seemed rooted during the summer, there now lay only the long perspective of distance.
    The harbor still sparkled with sunlight, the inner islands were black, tree-covered and faraway humps, while clean-lined and freshly painted Norwegian freighters stood at the docks beside rusty Panamanian buckets, scarred coastal tankers, trim Britons, Canadians and a small white-and-green Irishman sparkling with pride and polish. Spectral French and Italian death ships mouldered against the docks like ghosts suffering extreme unction through the sacramental wine in their scuppers, rust in their bilges, and the oil that enclosed their hulls. Gray and white American tankers flew snapping corporation colors from their masts like small testimonials to efficiency; and, hanging like spiders in great clusters of drying nets, the ever present trawlers were aromatic with sweat and sun and fish as men forked the catch from the holds like farmers pitching hay—while, in the channel, yachts and lobster boats moved like a swirl of gnats above the face of a drowsing absolute.
    Cutter Abner , en route to the grounds, laid line aboard the trawler Ezekiel , disabled with a cracked piston while inbound with a full catch packed beneath rapidly melting ice. Glass, standing bridge watch on the moored Adrian , was joined by Howard who was taking a break. Glass intermittently checked Abner 's progress. He switched the radio to the working frequency of 2694.
    "They'll save the load," Howard said, "if he don't break his seal too often staring down his hatch."
    "We've raised to eight knots," said the static-crackling voice of Abner 's captain. "How are you riding, cap?"
    "Raise it more if you wa-nt-a." Ezekiel 's radio was stronger than the rig on Abner . "This load ain't too thrifty."
    "We'll stay with eight," Abner crackled.
    "No sea to speak of," said Glass, "if they're shagging it that fast."
    "They better shag it fast. They're sitting on a perfume factory."
    It was then that Brace, passing a gallon of paint from the main deck to a man on the boat deck, learned that you never lift an open can of paint by the bale.
    Glass switched the set back to the faintly popping watch frequency. Through the open hatch, and distant, sounded the snap of the commission pennant, while from the buoy yard a crane groaned and whirred. An engine chugged and idled in the small boat basin. There was a thump, a small confusion of voices, a shout, and then whoops and hollers of laughter which gave way to a heavily trudging step along the main deck. Silence accompanied the walker, and then low laughter resumed as a thin, birdlike whistle of amazement seemed to nudge the heavy steps forward and up the ladder to the bridge.
    Brace stepped through the hatch wearing a single wrinkle on his otherwise smooth forehead, and doused with green paint splashed in his hair, across one cheek, and saturating his shirt like a slick lustre of green blood. The paint ran the length of one leg and