`Truth being stranger than fiction, when I was sailing LSTs through these waters after the war*" Taylor said, "I used to think back fondly on the smooth sailing characteris-tics in rough seas of the Joseph J. Isaacs, DE-403. In weather like this, the movement of an LST has to be experi-enced to be believed."
"I wonder how my men took to waking up in a storm like this," McCoy said. "They were still feeling pretty good when we came aboard."
"Didn't someone once say, `the wages of sin are death'?" Jones-Fortin said. "I suspect that a number of my crew are in the same shape." McCoy chuckled.
"But I'm afraid, McCoy," Jones-Fortin went on, "that I have to correct you. This isn't the storm. This is what they call `the edges' of the storm. The storm itself is farther north, coming down from China into the Yellow Sea."
"Right on our course to Inchon, right?" Taylor said.
"I'm afraid so," Jones-Fortin said. "There's an overlay of the latest weather projection on the chart. Perhaps you'd like to have a look. We have a decision to make." He indicated the chart room, aft of the wheel.
"Thank you, sir," Taylor said, and went for a look.
"Did you see what I saw?" Jones-Fortin asked when Taylor returned.
"I think so, sir," Taylor said, and turned to McCoy: "Ken, the way the storm is moving-and as the captain said, it's a bad one-I don't think we can put the boats over the side tomorrow morning. And maybe not even the morning after that."
"You mean it would be risky, or we just can't do it?"
"Tomorrow, we just can't do it. Period. The morning af-ter that, maybe, with more of a chance of something going wrong than I like."
"So what do we do?" McCoy asked.
"That's up to Captain Jones-Fortin," Taylor said.
"It's a bit over six hundred miles," Jones-Fortin said. "I think Charity can make fifteen knots, even through the storm. A little less when it gets as bad as I suspect it's going to get, a bit more when there are periods of relative calm. That would put us off the Flying Fish Channel lighthouse in forty hours-sometime before midnight on 18 August. As Mr. Taylor saw, the storm will still be in the area at that time. Whether or not it will have subsided enough for us to safely put the boats over the side-or for you to be able to safely make Tokchok-kundo in them-by 0300 of the nineteenth is something we won't know until then."
"And if it doesn't clear, sir, then what?" McCoy asked.
"Then we shall have to spend the daylight hours of the nineteenth steaming in wide circles offshore. Or, for that matter, we could steam farther south, to the northern edge of the storm, and follow its movement southward and see where we are, and when."
"You mean we would move at the speed of the storm, sir?" McCoy asked.
"It's moving now," Taylor said, "somewhere between fifteen and twenty miles an hour."
"As we followed it, we'd be out of it?" McCoy asked.
"That would depend, Ken," Taylor said, tolerantly, as if explaining something to a backward child, "on how close we were to it as we followed it."
"I will, of course, defer to the judgment of Captain Jones-Fortin," McCoy said. "And even to yours, Mr. Tay-lor. But if there were some way we could get out of the storm, that would be this landlubber's choice."
"Well, Mr. Taylor," Captain Jones-Fortin said, "another option would be to steam on an east-northeasterly course, hoping to find calmer waters on the storm's eastern edge."
"Your decision, of course, Captain," Taylor said, but his tone of voice made it clear what he hoped Jones-Fortin's decision would be.
"Then that's what we'll do," Jones-Fortin said.
"What that means, Ken," Taylor said, "is that it probably won't get much worse than it is now."
"Wonderful," McCoy said.
[FIVE]
ABOARD HMS CHARITY
39 DEGREES 06 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE,
123 DEGREES 25 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE
(THE YELLOW SEA)
0405 19 AUGUST 1950
"Have a look at that, Mr. McCoy," Captain Jones-Fortin said, pointing out the spray-soaked window of the bridge. "What is it they say, `all good things come to those who wait'?"
There was a bright glow of light coming through the cloud cover.
"Is that the northern edge of the storm?" McCoy said.
"Not exactly," Jones-Fortin said. "We are in the northern edge of the storm-I'm sure you will not be much surprised to learn that the weather people have finally decided what we have been steaming through is a hurricane-and that light you see is dawn coming up over what I devoutly hope will be calm waters."
"Me, too."
The Charity didn't seem to be tossing as much as she had been for the past forty hours, but McCoy wasn't sure if this was the case, or wishful thinking.
Ten minutes later, Jones-Fortin turned to McCoy again.
"Master mariner that I am, Mr. McCoy, it is my profes-sional judgment that in, say, ten minutes, it will be safe to step into my shower and have a wash and a shave. If you feel a similar need, may I suggest you go to your cabin, and then join me for breakfast in the wardroom in twenty minutes?"
"Thank you, sir."
"If you'd be so kind, ask Mr. Taylor to join us."
"Yes, sir, of course."
Jones-Fortin raised his voice. "Number One, you have the conn. I will be in my cabin."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"If, in your judgment, the situation continues to im-prove, in ten minutes order the mess to prepare the break-fast meal."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Twenty minutes later, McCoy and Taylor walked into the wardroom. Jones-Fortin was already there, wearing a fresh, crisply starched uniform of open-collared white shirt, shorts, and knee-length white socks. Taylor was in his usual washed soft khakis, and McCoy in Marine Corps utilities.
A white-jacketed steward handed them a neatly typed breakfast menu the moment they sat down, and poured tea from a silver pitcher for them.
A moment later, another steward delivered what McCoy at first thought was breakfast for all of them. But he set the entire contents of his tray-toast, six fried eggs on one plate, and a ten-inch-wide, quarter-inch-thick slice of ham on another-before the captain, then turned to McCoy and Taylor.
"And what can I have Cooky prepare for you, gentle-men?"
They gave him their order.
"Shortly after joining His Majesty's Navy," Jones-Fortin said, as he stuffed a yolk-soaked piece of toast into his mouth, "I learned that the hoary adage, `If you keep your stomach full, you do not suffer from mal de mer,' did not apply at all to Midshipman the Honorable Darwin Jones-Fortin. Quite the contrary. If I eat so much as a piece of dry toast in weather such as we have just experienced, I turn green and am out of the game. I trust you will forgive this display of gluttony. I haven't had a thing to eat since we left Sasebo."
"I haven't been exactly hungry myself, sir," McCoy said.
"On the subject of food," Jones-Fortin said. "Is there anything we can give you from Charity's stores to better the fare on Tokchok-kundo?"
"You're very kind, Captain," Taylor said.
"Bread, sir," McCoy said. "The one thing I really miss when I'm... I really miss fresh bread."
"I'll see to it."
"When do you think we'll be getting to the Flying Fish, sir?" Taylor asked.
"It's about two hundred twenty miles. The storm is mov-ing southward at about fifteen knots. That should put us off the lighthouse somewhere around 2100. It'll be dark then, and I think the seas will have subsided."