Dust on the Sea Read Online Free PDF

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    â€œYou know I’ll probably not be able to make it, Keith—It’s almost routine for a returning skipper to have to go to dinner at the admiral’s house the first night.” This was a non sequitur. Keith had already mentioned that probability. But the admiral’s dinners rarely lasted late, and in any case the wardroom party would be held in one of the hotel rooms, where Rich too would be assigned.
    Keith was not giving up. “How about after, then?”
    Richardson hardened his voice. “No. It’s your party, not mine. I’d be a drag on you fellows. Besides, with the curfew, I’d have to break some of the rules to make it out there after dark. You can all get just as drunk without me, anyway.” He gave his voice all the finality he could muster, while pretending to grin.
    Keith recognized defeat in the covert contest. “Okay, Skipper. But you won’t get away from us tomorrow—by the way, shouldn’t we send down for some dry clothes for you and Buck?”
    A few minutes later, as Eel rounded Hospital Point, there was indeed a larger than usual group watching. Several pairs of binoculars were also in appearance, being handed from one patient to another by solicitous nurses who were not above looking through them themselves as they did so. Eel was the only ship they had seen pass their lookout point so far that morning, and they made all the right deductions, save one, having had much experience in the meanings of the signs they could identify. Several among them muttered comments that Kona weather must not be all they had been led to expect: this rust-streaked sub, obviously just back from a very successful war patrol, probably to Empire areas, showed no signs of having been in the least discomfited. The two or three waves they had seen from a distance did not seem big. They were inadequate reason for the lack of other ships in the normally busy channel. Probably the authorities had been overcautious.
    But no one was able to give a plausible reason why, as well as could be seen from a distance, there were two naked men among the group on the bridge, toweling themselves and then apparently hastily donning their clothes.

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    T he reception at the dock in the submarine base was exactly as Richardson had imagined it would be, exactly as it had always been for a submarine returning from patrol. The number one docking space in front of the submarine base headquarters had been cleared for Eel . A trim and alert crew of enlisted line handlers stood prominently in the foreground, and a ten-piece band played popular music at the head of the pier. A crowd of khaki- and dungaree-clad submariners had gathered around the place where a long bridgelike wooden structure, the Admiral’s extra-wide ceremonial gangplank, or brow, its rails wrapped in shellacked white cord, was waiting to be put over to Eel ’s deck when she came to rest. Conspicuous near the brow, standing in the foreground and a little apart from the others, Rich could see the stocky figures of Admiral Small and his chief of staff, Captain Joe Blunt. Near them a burnished five-gallon milk can stood out among mail sacks, crates of fruit and vegetables, and a large sealed cardboard box which could only contain the traditional ice cream. All these still rested in the small cart that had been wheeled down to the dock, where friendly hands would eagerly pass them across the submarine’s rail and onto Eel ’s deck even while the arriving ceremonies were still in progress.
    But all did not seem quite the same as usual. At least, not to Richardson. Greater than ordinary warmth exuded from the crowd even before the docking maneuver had been completed. The smiles of welcome were broad, even broader than usual. Were they lacking a little in spontaneity? The wisecracks exchanged with Eel ’s crew as her black-and-gray, rust-splotched length slowly eased up alongside the dock into her