American Front

O'Do

Cleaning flatfish forgotten, Enos hurried to the rail and peered out across the Atlantic. It was indeed a submarine, traveling on the surface now because the Spray couldn't possibly hurt it. In case the fishermen hadn't noticed it was there, it fired its deck gun. A shell sent up a plume of seawater a couple of hundred yards in front of the trawler.

Patrick O'Do

The submersible closed rapidly. Soon Enos could see the Stars and Bars flying above it, too. A sailor ran out onto the deck of the Confederate vessel and began working the signal lamp. "Abandon-ship." Along with the rest of the Spray's crew, Enos read the Morse as it flashed across the water, letter by letter, word by word. "We-aim-to-sink-her."

"There's a surprise," Charlie White said with a grunt of laughter. "I figured they were going to buy our fish off us."

"Nova- Scotia -coast-100-miles-north," the signal lamp said. "Some-Yank-held-Good-luck-getting-there."

"Thanks a hell of a lot," Enos said. He helped Schoonhoven and Kemmel put the boat over the side. It looked very small, and a hundred miles of ocean enormously large. He glared toward the Rebel submersible, muttering, "And the horse you rode in on, too."

One after another, the crewmen from the Spray scrambled down into the boat. As captain, Patrick O'Do

Off to the other side of the Spray, he spotted what looked like a length of pipe sticking up out of the water and moving toward the Confederate submarine. He deliberately looked away from it. The Rebs on board the submersible paid it no heed. They were intent on coming right up to the Spray so they could sink her at point-blank range. If you didn't miss, you didn't waste shells. Pay attention to the trawler, he thought at the Confederates. Pay attention to the trawler a little longer.

He'd just started to think that again when three men in the boat who hadn't made themselves not look at that moving length of pipe whooped at the top of their lungs. O'Do

Everybody stopped rowing. Along with everybody else, George watched the torpedo's wake speed toward the Confederate submersible. He'd never seen anything move so fast in the water. "Run true," he breathed. "Come on-run true."

The torpedo did run true. It couldn't have had more than five hundred yards to travel: it was a point-blank shot, too. Three Rebs were standing with their heads and shoulders out of the co

Water and spray spurted up from the explosion, hiding the submersible for a moment. When it became visible again, it had broken in half. Bow and stern portions both sank amazingly fast. Diesel oil from the submarine spread over the water, flattening out the light chop. In the oil floated bits and pieces of debris and three splashing men-probably the ones in the co

"Let's go pick 'em up," O'Do

Enos reached out a hand to one and helped drag him into the boat filled with the crew of the Spray. The Reb was filthy with fuel oil and, beneath that dark brown coating, looked stu

"Welcome aboard, Senior Lieutenant Briggs," O'Do

Briggs looked over to the U.S. submarine, then glared at O'Do

O'Do

"We don't need to give you to the Bluefin to make you U.S. Navy prisoners, either," Enos added gleefully. "We're U.S. Navy, too, but I don't have to tell you my name, rank, and number."

More laughter roared out of the sailors and ex-fishermen who crewed the Spray. Charlie White said, "How many more Rebel submarines do you think we can sink before your boys catch on?"

Briggs and the other Confederates looked appalled to discover the trap into which they'd walked. The senior lieutenant had spunk, wet and stu

"You go to hell," Enos said, horrified at the notion. Several other sailors echoed him.

An officer from the Bluefin used a megaphone to shout across the water: "Shall we take your friends off your hands? We have more men aboard to keep an eye on them."

"Sounds good to me," Patrick O'Do

They returned to the Spray, which bobbed in the chop. Once up on deck, Charlie White shook himself, as if awakening from a happy dream. "Lord, that was sweet," he said.

For the black man, jeering at the Rebels had to be doubly delightful. It was plenty sweet enough for George, too. "Didn't figure I'd just keep on doing a fisherman's job after I joined the Navy," he said. "It's worked out pretty well, though-couldn't have worked out better." He turned to Patrick O'Do

"I'm too old and too stubborn to make an officer out of me now," O'Do

"Yes, sir!" White said enthusiastically. You weren't supposed to call a chief petty officer sir, but O'Do