Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [177]
"You may go, Polikopf. Your time in jail is your punishment." Captain Kelley wheeled around and looked out the window. Then he whipped his chair around once more. "Man to man, Polikopf, and what either of us says must never leave this room? Agreed?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Did Lieut. Adams put you up to this?"
"Oh, no! Excuse me, sir. No, sir!" The sailor was so obviously astonished by the question that he must be telling the truth. Captain Kelley dismissed him.
From then on Bus Adams had rough sailing. A great carrier came into the channel for supplies. Bus was forbidden to go aboard. He was not permitted to fly with pilots he had known in the States. They zoomed the volcanoes on Vanicoro and flew low over jungle villages. He had to stay behind on desk work that mysteriously piled up. He worked and swore and worked. Like the rest of us, he did more work in a week than he had ever before done in a month. He began to reconsider some of the snide jokes he had once pulled on the Supply Corps. "Real officers with their brains beat out!" he used to say. Now he began to wonder if maybe the Seashore Navy wasn't the real Navy and the Big-Boat Boys merely a gang of vacationists!
Even the weather conspired against Bus. He finally arranged to borrow a plane from the carrier on his day off. To hell with sleep! He could sleep any time, but he couldn't fly into Vanicoro volcanoes again. But on the day he was to fly, definite word was received that a hurricane was moving north! All ships for the strike moved out into the ocean under forced draft and headed away from the great storm.
We had to stay and take it! We stayed at the Depot and watched other activities move onto higher ground. We tied down our sleeping quarters while other units abandoned theirs and fled to safe positions. We locked doors, moved trucks against weak walls, hustled delicate instruments and chronometers to a small hill, broke out helmets to wear in case trees should blow over, and waited.
The fleet was gone by the time night fell on the second day of rain. There was a strong wind from one point off south. Gradually it veered to sou'-sou'-east. There it stayed and increased in velocity. It was now forty miles an hour, but it was still constant.
I had the watch that night, and for a while I hoped that the wind was subsiding. It did, for half an hour. Then a huge gust came in eight or ten violent puffs. I judged the velocity of the puffs to be about ninety miles an hour. Then there was another calm. I saw the rain perpendicular against the tired lights. Slowly, slowly it began to slant toward the coconut palms, in from the empty channel. Then, with a burst of tremendous power, the slanting rain was cracked like a whip and lay out parallel to the ground. A light went out, and then another. Wires were whipped away like the rain. Coconut trees threw their palms toward the hills, as if eager to flee, and some went down.
"Building 97 is buckling!" a voice cried over the phone. Our plan was to rush fire trucks and dump wagons to any building that weakened, but before I could put the plan into operation, I could hear, above the storm, the sound of a quonset hut ripping to pieces.
"Building 185 is going! All men safe!" another voice reported, and then that phone went dead.
Runners came into the barricaded office breathless and afraid. "It's rough out there!" one advised. "We can't send trucks into it. We'll have to trust to luck!"
We did. All that night men kept running to and from my watch to tell me of incidents that occurred. At 2300 Captain Kelley left his post at the switchboard and came in with me. Two other officers reported from a foot tour of the buildings.
"They're holding, captain," the inspection party reported.
In furious gusts the wind howled and drove water through every opening in every building and shack. One generator burned out and half the Depot was in darkness. Cooks brought kettles of coffee at 0300. "Potato shack done for," they reported. A jeep must have been left in neutral against strict