Book excerpt: Example in this ebook CHAPTER ONE - FAREWELL TO THE PLYMOUTH The launch purred smoothly across the calm waters of the harbor, making for the Navy Yard pier. Their feet braced against the slow roll of the boat, two young men stood looking at the huge gray ship they had just left. “I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Scoot Bailey said almost to himself. “Same here,” the other replied. March Anson was shorter than his friend, but more solidly and compactly built. His gray-blue eyes were steady and cool, matching the set of his jaw, but the crinkling lines at their corners showed that this apparently serious young man spent a good deal of time smiling or laughing. “She was a swell ship,” Scoot said sadly. “Was!” exclaimed March. “She still is! Just because Bailey and Anson have left her, don’t you think she can carry on any longer?” A slow smile spread over his face as he turned to look at his friend. But Scoot was serious. “Oh, sure, March,” he replied. “But she’s out of our lives now. She’s past tense for us. And—well, she’s been just about everything to us for a year now—home, mother, and sweetheart!” “I know what you mean,” March said. “And it’s natural for us to wonder if we’ve done the right thing in being transferred. Right now we’re looking at what we’re leaving. In another ten minutes we’ll be concentrating on what we’re going to!” Scoot Bailey turned around and sat down. “I’m going to start right now,” he grinned. “No use getting sentimental about the old Plymouth at this point. I’m going to start thinking about the Lexington or the Shangri-La or whatever aircraft carrier I’ll be on in a few months.” “Good idea,” March agreed, sitting beside the tall and gangling young man who now stared ahead at the Navy Yard. “But that’s one trouble right now, Scoot. Neither one of us knows exactly where he’ll be. If you knew exactly what ship you’d be attached to, you could make your thoughts more specific. When you get there, you know you’ll love her just as much as you’ve loved the Plymouth—more, in fact, because you’ll be flying at last!” “Yes, I know, but what about you?” Scoot asked. “I still can’t figure out why you want to be a pigboat man. And what can you dream about now as you look into the future? The name of some fish, that’s all.” “Sure, subs are named after fish,” March replied. “And they have some swell names, too—the Barracuda, the Dolphin, the Spearfish, the Amberjack!” “Yes, they sound all right,” Scoot grinned. “But what if you’re assigned to the Cod or the Herring or the Shad? No, I can’t figure out what you see in those stuffy, cramped, oversized bathtubs!” This light-hearted argument had been going on ever since March Anson and Scoot Bailey had been in the Navy together. Neither one minded the jibes of the other, but the dispute as to the respective merits of air and underwater craft never ended. “Cozy and snug,” March said stoutly, “that’s what subs are! Not cramped and stuffy! Why—they’re all air-conditioned now!” “Maybe so,” Scoot said, shaking his head, “but no air-conditioning can match the clear blue sky a couple of miles up there where I’ll be flying! Boy—what a chance! Just what I’ve always wanted!” Their departure from the cruiser Plymouth was forgotten now as they thought of their futures. Only one aspect of that future was rarely mentioned by either of them, and they tried not to think too much about it. In their new activities they would not be together—these two who had been inseparable friends for so many long years. They had met in the first year of high school, back in that small Ohio city which now, during war, seemed so many miles and so many years away. Scoot had lived in Hampton all his life, but March had just moved there from the farm which his mother had sold when his father died. A widow with a son only thirteen years old could not run a 160-acre farm, she had decided, not if her son was to get the education she had determined he would have. To be continue