The Gulf itself held a scum of débris of all kinds, and its shore, as far as we could see, was a rim of ruins.
I had not seen a single spot where a landing was possible. Kennard had wigwagged his ship, and one by one we fell into single file. Down below, thousands of people—the survivors—had their heads turned upward. Down in the ruins I could see bodies, now, and out in the bay unnumbered corpses were floating.
Suddenly Kennard started down, and then I saw what had been done. There had been other disasters and floods in Texas, when the airplanes had saved lives. Laguna had prepared. A force of hundreds of men was just finishing the job of clearing a hundred-foot runway down the hard-packed beach on the outskirts of the town; and it was there, one by one, that we landed, to face haggard, hollow-eyed men, steeped in tragedy.
Much happened during our days at Laguna; but that has nothing to do with Penoch O’Reilly and Ralph Kennedy. Anyway, twenty minutes later we were all back in the air, carrying packages of food and water, put up to float. Each of us had a sector assigned. We went roaring out over the open Gulf, spotting survivors who were floating on improvised rafts or clinging to planks. Kennard’s ship, with Jack Beaman at the radio key, was flashing information to San Antonio. Soon the Donovan ships would be coming in, carrying supplies.
As we got out over the water, I turned to look at George Hickman, pointing downward. He’s big and blond and nerveless; but his face was strained, and there was the closest thing to fear, that I’ve ever seen in his eyes.
As for me, I was one jump ahead of a fit. Down below, flashing along between carcasses of human beings and animals, were what seemed like untold hundreds of fins, cutting the water and feeding on their prey. Six times we swooped low to drop food and water to those poor wretches down below us. We could almost look into sharks’ eyes, and time after time the flash of a white belly announced another mouthful.
Remember this, too. If we came down in the water, we could float two hours. There was not a single serviceable boat to rescue a soul.
I flew six solid hours that day, as did every one of the others. It was just before the last patrol, and getting dusk, when I ran into Kennedy for the first time. Our landings hadn’t synchronized before.
“God!” I heard him mumble in an unutterably tired voice. “This’ll drive me nuts! I can’t even swim, if I come down.”