“Thanks!” I yelled back. “Hi, Percy!”
The chopper turned a few hundred feet beyond the ship and headed back into the wind.
It was coming straight toward the ship and would have touched down soon when something came out of the water right under it. Some said it was a machine-to me it looked like an enormous elephant’s trunk. A stream of water so solid, hard, and bright that it looked like steel shot out of the end of it; it struck a rotor tip and the heli staggered.
The Captain leaned the craft over and it slipped out of contact. The stream followed it, smashed against the fuselage and again caught a rotor; the heli tilted violently and began to fall.
I’m not much in an emergency; it is hours later when I figure out what I should have done. This time I acted without thinking. I dived down the ladder without hitting the treads and was on down in the cargo deck almost at once. The port of that side was closed, as it had been since the Captain ordered it closed earlier; I slapped the switch and it began to grind open. Then I looked around and saw what I needed: the boat falls, coiled loosely on deck, not yet secured. I grabbed a bitter end and was standing on the port as it was still swinging down to horizontal.
The wrecked helicopter was floating right in front of me and there were people struggling in the water. “Uncle Steve!” I yelled “Catch!” I threw the line as far as I could.
I had not even seen him as I yelled. It was just the idea that was in the top of my mind. Then I did see him, far beyond where I had been able to throw the line. I heard him call back, “Coming, Tom!” and he started swimming strongly toward the ship.
I was so much in a daze that I almost pulled the line in to throw it again when I realized that I had managed to throw far enough for some one. I yelled again. “Harry! Right behind you! Grab on!”
Harry Gates rolled ever in the water, snatched at the line and got it. I started to haul him in.
I almost lost him as I got him to the ship’s skin. One of his arms seemed almost useless and he nearly lost his grasp. But between us we managed to manhandle him up and into the port; we would not have made it if the Ship had not been so low in the water. He collapsed inside and lay on his face, gasping and sobbing.
I jerked the fall loose from his still clenched hand and turned to throw it to Uncle Steve.
The helicopter was gone, Uncle Steve was gone, again the water was swept clean-except for Percy, who, with his head high out of water, was swimming with grim determination toward the ship.
I made sure that there were no other people anywhere in the water. Then I tried to think what I could do for Percy.
The poor little porkchop could not grab a line, that was sure. Maybe I could lasso him. I fumbled to get a slip knot in the heavy line. I had just managed it when Percy gave a squeal of terror and I jerked my head around just in time to see him pulled under the water.
It wasn’t a mouth that got him. I don’t think it was a mouth.
XV “CARRY OUT HER MISSION”
I don’t know what I expected after the attack by the behemoths. We just wandered around in a daze. Some of us tried to look out from the monkey island deck until that spouter appeared again and almost knocked one of us off, then Captain Urqhardt ordered all hands to stay inside and the hatch was closed.
I certainly did not expect a message that was brought around after supper (if supper had been served; some made themselves sandwiches) telling me to report at once for heads-of-departments conference. “That’s you, isn’t it, Tom?” Chet Travers asked me. “They tell me Unc Alfred is on the sick list. His door is closed.”