Decker's Marine Raiders 03.Pacific Grit by Scott Cook

Author:Scott Cook [Scott Cook]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spindrift Press
Published: 2023-08-07T23:00:00+00:00

EASTERN END OF GUADALCANAL – 5 MILES FROM MORAH

“Come cheer up, me lads, ‘tis to glory we steer! To find something new in this wonderful year! To honor we call you, not press you like slaves… for who are so free as the sons of the waves!”

This old English sailor’s ditty, a common and boisterous drinking song, was being belted out by Eroni as he stood behind the wheel of his decrepit little motor launch. His deer hunter was perched rakishly on his balding pate, and he had a Lucky Strike dangling from one corner of his mouth and another in his left hand. Alternately, between verses and songs, Eroni would remove one smoke to puff on the other, or place both in opposite corners of his mouth in order to better scratch his privates.

“Come on, lads!” the native doctor emoted. “Surely you must know a shanty or two, eh?”

“Anybody ever tell you that you was off your rocker, Doc?” Travis inquired with a wry smile.

“So I’m often told by the people of my village… and my wife,” Eroni admitted cheerfully as he guided the chugging boat along the beach a hundred yards off their starboard side. “But, however… being the only doctor in town and the only husband to which she might lay claim… as far as I know… what choice have they, eh? Ha-ha-haa! Come now, lads… pip-pip, cheerio, stiff upper lip, and all that.”

“How much further, sir?” Evans, the new man asked.

Evans was something of a departure from the previous Evans they’d lost at Vungana. Where Gilbert Evans had been tall and spoke with a Boston accent, this man was shorter, stockier, and had a polite midwestern manner.

“Oh, not far now, my boy!” Eroni said, slapping the young Marine on his broad shoulder. “But we can’t simply pull in and run ashore, now, can we? Sun’s setting now, and we might be able to pull into a little cove I know hereabouts. Get our ship squared away and then give Morah Sound a bit of a once over, what?”

“What he’s sayin’, Hank,” Gartrell offered wryly from a perch atop a stack of boxes, “is that we got a good hour of singin’ left.”

“Pre-cisely!” Eroni boomed and laughed. “Come now, lads! Surely you must know a few Navy songs, eh?”

“We’re Marines,” offered Travis.

“Oh, rot!” replied their… captain. “What of this one… My father often told me, when I was just a lad… a sailor’s life was very hard, the food was often bad… But now I’ve joined the Navy, I’m aboard a man o’war… now I find a sailor ain’t a sailor anymore!”

Evans’s eyes gleamed and he joined in with the chorus.

“Don’t haul on the rope, don’t climb up the mast! And if you see a sailin’ ship, it might be your last! Just GET your civvies ready for another run ashore… a sailor ain’t a sailor ain’t a sailor anymore! HEY!”

“Good grief…” Gartrell muttered but couldn’t help but laugh. And when the next chorus came around, both he and Travis joined in.

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