U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [247]
It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers on the destroyers and the Salem that was in command gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see the Atlantic Ocean ful of long strings of freighters al blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like bar-berpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself
-159-in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerry-built out of new wood --somebody musta been making money --that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half way across.
Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's
cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got in the zone, al the ships started steering a zigzag course and everybody began to get white around the gil s. Joe never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels, bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting. around, they sure felt good.
It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of the yel ing and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only got ashore for a few hours and couldn't find Marceline and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the Delaware with al the new Americanbuilt steel and con-crete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by tow-ing five ships' boats crowded to the gunnels, so they guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.
No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the mate knocked him flat and said he'd have him arrested when he got back home for a damn German spy. They
coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure
-160-enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel himself and yel ed down the tube to the engine room to give him everything they'd got, that wasn't much to be sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.
The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo prob-ably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale that was blowing up west northwest. They'd no sooner crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that shook the ship and a column of water shot up that
drenched them al on the bridge. Everything worked like clockwork. No. I was the only compartment flooded. As luck would have it, the crew was al out of the focastle standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The Chemang settled a little by the bow, that was al . The gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have a couple of shots, but the ship was rol