Free Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson

somethin’. I know it’s too heavy to carry, push, or drag without rollers.” He shrugged. “Those are the schemes I’ve come up with. You conjure up something better, we’ll do it.”
    Rajendra was silent for a long moment, staring at the shoreline, the breakers, and the waves. Absently, he twisted the ends of his mustache probably out of what was an old habit. He sighed. “The shattered planks on the bottom of the launch have been removed. Sadly, there were quite a few. Like you, I confess to believing only a miracle delivered us across the breakers. The carpenter has been shaping planks from what he hopes will be suitable trees—it is so difficult to tell with these unknown woods—but even with the existing repairs, he fears an inadequacy of fasteners. Nails. I don’t see how we can disassemble the boat further without damaging or destroying even more fasteners. That’s one thing we didn’t think to carry away much stock of.”
    “Carpenter forgettin’ nails is like a gunner’s mate runnin’ off without bullets,” Silva accused. “Dumb-ass.”
    “He does have tools,” Rajendra said in defense of the carpenter. “A drill and some bracing bits. Perhaps he can use dowels instead of nails, but I don’t think we dare break the boat down into pieces small enough to carry.” He looked at Silva. “I also agree, if you’re right about the obstacles, that the combination of floating and portaging the boat would be more complicated and potentially more dangerous.” He sighed. “So for now it looks as though your tedious and laborious plan is our best chance after all.”

CHAPTER 4
    Talaud Island
    L ieutenant Irvin Laumer felt the tremor through the hull of the old submarine, S-19, even over the vibrating rumble of the big starboard NELSECO diesel. The battered submarine was entirely afloat now, in the sandy pit they’d carved around it, which meant the tremor must be bad indeed if he felt it through the water. He looked at Machinist’s Mate Sandy Whitcomb, who was tinkering with the diesel, adjusting it. Sandy glanced back at him, catching his eye. He felt it too. Together, they just stood there in the engine room, sweating in the dull glare of the electric lights that glowed with the power the generator was packing into the batteries. The tremor continued. Radioman Tex Sheider stuck his head into the compartment through the forward hatch. His bearded face was flanked by a pair of’Cats, and it would have been a comical scene if not for Tex’s expression.
    “You better get a load a’ this, Skipper,” he said.
    “On my way,” Laumer replied. “Where’s Midshipman Hardee?”
    “Topside.”
    Laumer exchanged another tense glance with Whitcomb and hurried after Tex. The almost bare aft berthing space had been converted into a workshop where many of the boat’s systems were undergoing repair, and they had to weave their way among the various ongoing projects before reaching the even more cramped control room. Climbing the forward ladder, they exited onto the deck, just in front of the conn tower and aft of the boat’s four-inch-fifty gun.
    For just a moment Laumer looked around. The excavation around the boat had filled with water during a small storm the week before, which meant any remaining repairs below the waterline were out of the question. It was just as well. The boat was as tight as they had any reason to expect after wallowing on the Talaud Island beach for the better part of a year and a half. The rudder, shafts, and screws seemed relatively straight. The only thing they hadn’t been able to fix was a warped starboard diving plane. They’d managed to straighten it a little, so it shouldn’t cause a problem on the surface, but it had little range of motion. Of course, the last thing any of them ever wanted to do was take S-19 underwater again.
    He quickly noted that their tender, perhaps whimsically named USS Toolbox still floated where she should a couple of hundred yards offshore. As