Send in your short stories and I will post them for the world to read
Page two - Fox and Quill, vol 1, issue 6, August 2006
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The Dragon with Two Lives
- by
John Wolf “Where do you have us now, Barney?” the Captain said as he leaned over the navigation table of the Tatsu Maru. A yellowish hue was washing across the chart, thick with island dots, atolls and outcropping reefs. There was a course-line penciled in that ran through the blotches in a zigzag pattern. “GPS has us here,” Barney said while pointing to a chart with a long pair of dividers. “I took a celestial shot while you were looking in on the engine room. It compares favorably. It never fails, when you are in tricky waters, your nav-aides start flaking out. The GPS receiver is intermittent.” “Just keep on it, Barney,” Captain Whalen said with confidence in his voice as he disengaged the wheel lock to feel the rudder in his hands again. He wanted nothing but calm tonight. It was his decision to cut through the island chains north of the New Hebrides on the east side of the Coral Sea. Captain John Whalen had a deadline to meet. He planned to pass through the Vanuatu Island chain as a short cut to reach Fiji before his cargo got sick. The hold was full of goats and pigs. “Okay, bear left fifteen degrees – now.” Captain Whalen spun the wheel through his fingers and stopped with the compass swaying back and forth, settling down on a heading of 075. Barney could concentrate on the course now that the Captain was back at the helm. The Captain had to check on an engine hiccup just as the Tatsu Maru started to enter the channels. “What was the engine problem?” Barney asked. “Fuel filter was clogged on number two,” Whalen responded. “I had to switch in the spare. Remind me when we get back into open seas to have Jake remove the old one.” |
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The crew of five included two load tenders and Jake. Jake usually worked the engine room, but for this trip he was the cargo supervisor. They had been tending to the needs of the livestock they brought onboard in New Guinea. There was news of hoof-and-mouth disease in the villages west of Port Moresby and Captain Whalen wasn’t going to hang around and have his cargo go bad. The port authorities felt there was little threat. Nevertheless, it was prudent to make Fiji and get paid before anything showed up in the animal’s blood tests. The seas were very quiet and it was a moonlit night with clear skies, otherwise it would have been foolish to attempt skipping through these ship nets. These specks of land were famous for grounding ships. There were rusted out hulks scattered through out the Vanuatu chain. A younger John Whalen had much experience with his life long friend Barney Stokes in zooming high speed, low draft surface crafts through these atolls. They felt tonight was going to be easy. Confidence was building, since they were more than halfway through. “Okay, now take her to one-three-zero for the next ten minutes or so, and then back to one-one-seven. That should be the last wiggle.” “I just saw the Baxter Reef slip by. Bull Head Rock is still there looking for a hull to break,” Whalen said as he cast an eye out the open window. “You cut that one a little close, Barney.” “Hey, it’s your job to compensate for currents. This is still a manual steer.” Barney was tapping the chart with the dividers and thinking to himself – we’re going to make it. He came up beside his old friend and they both grinned while looking out the front glass window onto a beautiful pristine night. The moon was high and the ocean was patchy with light to dark shades of blue to black as sand bars, reefs and kelp fields slipped past under the ship.
(continued on page 3) |
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