W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"Good morning, Martha," Pickering said.

"Hello, Pick," Martha said.

She did not seem nearly as glad to see Pickering as Pick was to see her.

"Since no one seems to be about to introduce us, gentlemen," Admiral Sayre said, "I'll introduce myself. I'm Admiral Sayre."

"How do you do, sir?" Pickering said politely.

"Jim, this is Lieutenant Pickering," Mrs. Sayre said. "I'm afraid I don't know this-"

"Stecker, ma'am," Stecker said. "Dick Stecker."

"We're here for the brunch," Mrs. Sayre said. "Why don't you join us?"

"We wouldn't want to intrude," Stecker said.

"That's very kind, thank you very much, we'd love to," Pickering said.

"I'd like to thank you for doing this, Dick," Mrs. Jeanne Sayre said to Stecker. "Ma'am?" Stecker asked. They were in the cabin of the Martha 111, a twenty-eight-foot cruising sailer, now two miles offshore, and heeled twenty degrees from the vertical in nasty choppy seas. Jeanne Sayre had boiled water for tea on a small stove. Stecker had welcomed the opportunity to get out of the spray by helping her. When he had come below, Martha was with her father in the cockpit, and Pick was way up front, just behind what Stecker had earlier learned (looking at the photo in the yacht club) was the "bowsprit."

"I'm sure you and Pick had other plans for this afternoon," Jeanne Sayre said.

"This is fine," he said. "I'm glad to be here."

"Even though you're going to have to have your uniform cleaned, if it's not ruined, not to mention buying shoes, which have already been ruined?" she asked, smiling tolerantly.

"I've never had a chance to do something like this before," Stecker said.

"My husband too rarely gets the chance to do anything like this," Jeanne Sayre said. "He really works too hard, and he's reluctant-he's really a nice guy-to ask his aides to 'volunteer' I saw his eyes light up when he heard Pick was a real sailor. I didn't have the heart to kick him under the table when he asked if anybody would like a little sail."

"Pick's having a fine time," Stecker said, smiling.

He'd be having a much better time, of course, if it wasn't for you, the admiral, and me; and it was just him and your well-stacked daughter sailing off into the sunset on this goddamned little boat.

The boat at the moment started to change direction. Stecker's eyes reflected his concern.

"We're turning," she said. "I guess my husband decided we're far enough offshore."

The Martha III came to a vertical position, and then started heeling in the other direction.

"Man overboard!" a male voice, obviously the admiral's, cried.

For a moment, Stecker thought it was some sort of joke in bad taste, but then he saw the look on Mrs. Sayre's face, and knew it was no joke. Obviously, Pick, playing Viking up front, had lost his footing and gone into the water. There was a quick sense of amusement-serves the bastard right-quickly replaced by a feeling of concern. The water out there was

choppy. People drowned when they fell off boats, particularly into choppy water.

He followed Jeanne Sayre as she went quickly to the cockpit. He looked forward. Pick hadn't gone overboard. He was halfway between the bow and the cockpit. And he had taken his blouse off.

Pick ripped a circular life preserver free and threw it over the side; and then, in almost a continuous motion, he made a quick running dive over the side. He still had his socks on, Stecker saw, but he had removed his shoes.

Stecker looked over the stern. Surprisingly far behind the boat, he saw Martha Sayre Culhane's head bobbing in the water, held up by an orange life preserver.

Mrs. Sayre had taken her husband's position at the wheel, and while she watched both her husband (who was lowering the mainsail) and her daughter behind her in the water, she was trying to start the gasoline auxiliary engine.

The moment it burst into life, Admiral Sayre lowered the sail all the way.

"Bring her around!" he ordered, and then pushed past Stecker to get a boat hook from the cabin.

Stecker felt both useless and absurd.

He searched the water and found first Martha and then Pickering. Pickering was swimming with sure, powerful strokes to Martha, towing the life ring behind him on its line.

It seemed to take a very long time for the Martha III to turn, but once she was through the turn, she seemed to pick up speed. When Stecker saw Martha again, Pick was beside her in the water.

It took three minutes before the Martha III reached them. Mrs. Sayre expertly stopped the boat beside them, and then Stecker and Admiral Sayre hauled them in, first Martha, and then Pickering. They were blue-lipped and shivering.

"Take them below, and get them out of their clothes," Admiral Sayre said. "There's still some blankets aboard?"

"Yes," his wife said.

The admiral looked around the surface of the water, located a channel marker, and pointed it out to Stecker.

"Make for that," he ordered. "I'll relieve you in a minute."

"Aye, aye, sir," Stecker said, obediently. And for the first time in his life he took the conn of a vessel underway.

When he went to the cabin, Admiral Sayre-seeing that his wife had already stripped their daughter of her dress and was working on her slip-faced Pickering aft before he ordered him out of his wet doming. Pick stripped to his underwear, and then Admiral Sayre wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

"I'll hang your pants and shirt from the rigging. You'll look like hell, but it will at least be dry," the admiral said.

"Thank you, sir," Pick said.

"Why the hell did you go over the side?" the admiral demanded.

"I thought maybe she was hurt," Pick said.

"Well, I'm grateful," the admiral said. He looked down the cabin. "You all right, honey?" he asked.

"A little wet," Martha said.

"I'll do what I can to dry your clothes," her father said. "Jeanne, you go topside and take the helm."

"Aye, aye, Admiral, sir," his wife replied, dryly sarcastic.

Now wrapped, Martha and Pick looked at each other across the cabin.

And then Pick crossed the cabin to her.

"You want to tell me what that was all about?" Martha asked.

"If I had a bicycle, I would have ridden it no hands," Pick said.

She walked past him to the ladder to the cockpit, and turned and walked in the other direction.

"It was a dumb thing to do," Martha said. "You weren't even wearing a life jacket. You could have drowned, you damn fool."

"So could you have," Pick said slowly. "And if you were going to drown, I wanted to drown with you."

"Jesus," she said. And she looked at him. "You're crazy."

"Just in love," he said.

"My God, you are crazy," she said.

"Maybe," Pick said. "But that's the way it is. And this was my last chance. We're leaving Tuesday."

"Jim Carstairs told me," Martha said, and then: "Oh, Pick, what are you doing to me?" she asked, very softly.

"Nothing," he said. "What I would like to do is put my arms around you and never let you go."

Her hand came out from under her blanket and touched his face. His hand came out and touched hers, and then his arms went around her, as he buried his face in her neck.

This served to dislodge the blankets covering the upper portions of their bodies. Martha had removed her brassiere, and was wearing only her underpants. As if with a mind of its own, Pick's hand found her breast and closed over it.

"My God!" she whispered, taking her mouth from his a long, long moment later. "My parents!"

They retrieved their blankets.

When Admiral Sayre came into the cabin no more than a minute later, they were on opposite sides of the cabin, Martha sitting down, Pick leaning against a locker.

But maybe it wasn't necessary. They had color in their faces again. Martha's face, in fact, was so red that she could have been blushing.