“Hey, I’m just thumbin’ a ride—and I appreciate the favor, though it seems like an awful risk for you.”
Miller was back, joining Johnson on the settee. “The skipper here is generally regarded as the best all-around schooner master on the seas.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But sailing into Japanese waters…”
Johnson leaned back, a knee locked in his palms. “We’ll drop anchor outside Saipan, beyond the three-mile territorial zone.”
“Who’s going to take me in?”
“I will. And Hayden, my first mate…he’s no rich kid, he’s a real sailor.”
I glanced at Miller. “Who am I on this ship?”
“You’re Nate Heller,” Miller said. “The skipper has told his boys that, should anyone ask, you were along for the full four-week cruise of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.”
“Captain,” I asked, “is your crew aware this is a government mission?”
“They are,” Johnson said, nodding. “They know none of the particulars, just that we’re doing the red-white-and-blue a favor. They’re good kids, obviously from good backgrounds, and can be trusted.”
I looked at Miller again. “This sounds a little freewheeling to me.”
Miller’s shrug was barely perceptible. “We’ll have a talk with the boys at the first available moment.”
A native steward brought Johnson his lemonade. The skipper nodded his thanks to the man, and sipped at the tall cool glass. “You can have them briefed at Nauru,” Johnson said to Miller.
“Frankly, Captain,” I said, “I’m surprised you’re out in these waters with your boatload of silver spoons, considering what’s going on in this world.”
Geckos were chasing flies; catching and eating them, too, in those spilled circles of light.
“I was worried the war might dog our tracks out on the high seas,” he admitted. “And I have my wife and two young sons with me, after all…. Maybe the time has passed for carefree sailing into the world’s faraway places.”
Or maybe, like Amy, he was a well-known civilian with a handy, credible cover for reconnaissance.
I tossed a nod back toward the tin-hut hotel behind us. “It certainly hasn’t stopped millionaires from taking pleasure cruises.”
“My schooner is not the China Clipper, Mr. Heller,” Johnson said, the smile turning wry. “You’re stepping into the past when you set foot on my deck. The Yankee was sailing the North Sea before any of us were born.”
And in the Guam harbor the next morning, anchored among the warships and freighters, the Yankee indeed looked as if she had sailed out of the past into a harsher, less pleasing present, this majestic white-hulled schooner, nearly a hundred feet long, like a pirate ship of good guys, as the American flag painted on her bow attested.
My travel bag in one hand, with the other I shook hands with Miller, dockside, and he asked, “Any final questions?”
“Yeah. What do you mean, ‘final’?”
And he actually laughed. “Good luck, Nate.”
“Thank you, Bill,” I said, and meant it. He had worked hard, preparing me for this mission. He was one cold son of a bitch, but then I was a smartass bastard, so who was I to talk?
Captain Johnson, at the wheel, invited me to stand beside him as we cast off and glided out. Brown-as-a-berry rich kids scurried around his deck in shorts and no shirts and no shoes, as he called out to them, “Foresail!…Mainsail!…Forestaysail!…Jib!…Maintopsail!…Fisherman staysail!” One by one they were set, then finally a massive square sail dropped from the yardarm, and a triangular one rose above it, thousands of square feet of sail, a skyscraper of canvas.
“Spend much time at sea?” the Skipper asked.
“Does Lake Michigan count?”
He laughed. “On Lake Michigan, do you run into swells two hundred yards from crest to crest?”
“Well, Chicago is the Windy City…. I’ve had some ocean voyages, Skipper. I think I can survive one day of this.”
And one day was all my tour of sea duty with the Yankee would amount to: a long day, ten hours, and after sundown, we would drop anchor and spend the night, so that come morning Johnson and his first mate could row me to the next stop on my itinerary: Tanapag Harbor. Saipan. The town of Garapan.
In the meantime that long day did prove a restful journey into a simpler time. It was a sunny day with a warm breeze, the ship sailing steadily along, the ocean shimmering with sunlight. The boys—and two pretty girls in their twenties were along, too, which considering the dozen young men aboard made for interesting arithmetic—began the day ambitiously, scraping and varnishing the teak trim, splicing ropes and lines; the two girls, a blonde (Betsy from Rochester, New York) and a brunette (Dorothy from Toronto), were sewing canvas covers and mending sail. By afternoon, the barechested sailor boys and the two girls in shorts and boy’s shirts were sprawled here and there on the deck, bathed in sun, or reading in the shade of dinghies.
Belowdeck had a warmth due to more than the sun streaming through the skylights; painted ivory with varnished teak trim, the big main cabin had built-in upper and lower bunks on either side. Down the middle was an endless teakwood table where, between meals, cards were played, books were read, letters written. In the forward galley, Fritz the cook (one of the few crew members getting paid) made the most of powdered milk, canned butter, and wax-coated eggs. Lunch was particularly memorable—turtle stew with curry, baked beans, fried onions, and johnnycakes.
Watching these young people work and play was a reminder of life’s little pleasures. Johnson’s wife, Electa, Exy to one and all, was a compact curvy blue-eyed blonde in a blue-and-white-striped top and blue shorts, and who could blame Johnson for running off to sea in her company? She spent much of her time with her two young sons, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, who nimbly navigated the deck, balancing on forebooms, bouncing on sails.
“They’re fearless,” I said to her.
Exy’s smile was a dazzler. “The Yankee’s their home. They never lived anywhere else…. You’re in their back yard.”
The two kids had their own cabin below, down the hall from the Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s cabin, the engine room and bathroom. There was also a double stateroom for Betsy and Dorothy, who may just have been two more of the “boys” on this trip but nonetheless did not make use of the main cabin’s dormlike bunks.
I had been assigned my own bunk, for my one night aboard the Yankee, six and a half feet long by three feet wide, thirty inches between my thin mattress and the slats of the bunk overhead. The wall next to me was bookshelves, as was the case with every bunk, and the main cabin had an entire wall devoted to books. This was a well-read, and often-reading, crew, reflecting the hours they had to kill, and their good breeding.
The ship’s first mate, Hayden, a tow-headed, long-legged, sinewy middle-class kid from New Jersey, twenty or so, passed along the skipper’s orders with an offhanded ease. Sometimes, seasoned sailor that he was, he seemed to be acting as an interpreter between Johnson and the rich kids playing sailor. Of course, some of these “kids” were in their late twenties and early thirties. The wealthy crew included a doctor, a photographer, a radio expert, and a guy who knew his way around the ship’s diesel engine. Even so, Hayden had the respect and obedience of them all.
The young man had a serious mien but an explosive smile, and was devoted to Johnson. Thinking about what was coming tomorrow morning, I decided to look for a chance to talk straight with Hayden about what he was getting into.
After a turtle-steak supper, the crew gathered on deck to see what kind of sunset God had in mind for them. The sea turned a glaring red, and the water danced with phosphorescence, as if an underwater fireworks show was going on. The childlike joy on the faces of these pampered, hardened mariners as they leaned at the rail was both touching and a little sickening. Life wasn’t this simple, anymore. These were Depression times; war times. They were hiding, out here in the open. But who the hell could blame them?