by Herman Wouk
The first lieutenant gave him a brief surprised side glance. “Damn keen mind.”
“Do you think he’s a good officer?” Willie knew he was trampling on etiquette, but curiosity was too strong. The first lieutenant put his binoculars to his eyes.
“Gets by,” he said, “like the rest of us.”
“He doesn’t seem to think much of the Navy.”
Maryk grunted. “Tom don’t think much of a lot of things. Get him started on the West Coast sometime.”
“Are you from the West Coast?”
Maryk nodded. “Tom says it’s the last primitive area left for the anthropologists to study. He says we’re a lot of white tennis-playing Bushmen.”
“What did you do before the war, sir?”
Maryk glanced uneasily at the dozing captain. “Fisherman.”
“Commercial fishing?”
“Look, Keith, we’re not supposed to shoot the breeze on watch. If you have questions about the ship or the watch that’s a different matter, of course.”
“Sorry.”
“Skipper’s easygoing about it. But it’s a good idea to keep your mind on the watch.”
“Certainly, sir. There just wasn’t much happening, so-”
“When anything happens it generally happens fast.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
After a while Maryk said, “There they are.”
“Where, sir?”
“One point to starboard.”
Willie trained his glasses in that direction. Behind the iridescent edges of the empty waves there was nothing-except-the thought there might be two, no, three, faint black points like bristles on an unshaven chin.
Maryk woke the captain. “Three cans hull down, sir, about three miles west of rendezvous.”
The captain mumbled, “Okay, go to twenty knots and close ’em.”
The three hairlines became masts, then the hulls appeared, and soon the ships were plain to see. Willie knew the silhouettes well: three stacks with an untidy gap between the second and third; feeble little three-inch guns; slanting flush deck; two cranes crooked queerly over the stern. They were sister bastards to the Caine, destroyer-minesweepers. The captain stretched, and came out to the wing. “Well, which ones are they?”
The signalman Engstrand seized a long telescope and squinted at the bow numbers. “Frobisher-” he said. “Jones-Moulton.”
“Moulton!” exclaimed the captain. “Look again. She’s in SoPac.”
“DMS 21, sir,” said Engstrand.
“What do you know. Duke Sammis with us again, hey? Send ‘em ‘Greetings to the Iron Duke from De Vriess.’ ”
The signalman began blinking the shutter of the large searchlight mounted on the flagbag. Willie picked up the telescope and trained it on the Moulton. The three DMS’s were coming closer every minute. Willie thought he saw the long sad face of Keggs hanging over the rail on the bridge. “I know someone on the Moulton!” he said.
“Fine,” said De Vriess. “Makes the operation more cozy- Keep the conn, Steve, and fall in a thousand yards aft of the Moulton, column open order.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Willie had been one of Furnald Hall’s champions of the blinker light. He was proud of his ability to send Morse at eight words a minute. Nothing seemed more natural than for him to take the shutter handle, when Engstrand relinquished it, and start blinking at the Moulton. He wanted to greet Keggs, and he also thought that his prowess at Morse might cause the captain to think a little more highly of him. The signalman-Engstrand and two assistants-stared at him, appalled. “Don’t worry, my lads,” he said. “I can send.” How like sailors it was, he thought, to hug their little accomplishments, and resent an officer who could match them. The Moulton returned his call. He began spelling out “H-E-L-L-O K-E-G-G-S-W-H-A-T A-”
“Mister Keith,” said the captain’s voice at his ear, “what are you doing?”
Willie stopped blinking, resting his hand on the shutter lever. “Just saying hello to my friend, sir,” he replied blandly.
“I see. Get your hand off that light, please.”
“Yes, sir.” He complied with a yank. The captain took a long breath, expelled it slowly, then spoke in patient tones. “I should make something clear to you, Mister Keith. The communication facilities of a ship have nothing in common with a public pay telephone. Only one person aboard this ship has the authority to originate messages, and that is myself, so hereafter-”
“This was in no sense an official message, sir. Just hello-”
“Confound it, Keith, you wait till I’m through talking! Whenever this ship breaks radio or visual silence for any reason whatever, with any manner of signal whatever, that is an official communication for which I and I alone am held responsible! Is that clear, now?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I just didn’t know, but-”
De Vriess turned and snarled at the signalman, “Damn it to hell, Engstrand, are you asleep on watch? This light is your responsibility.”
“I know, sir.” Engstrand hung his head.
“The fact that some officer happens to be uniformed on communication procedure is no excuse for you. Even if the exec puts a hand on that light you’re supposed to kick him the hell across the bridge away from it. That happens again, you’re out ten liberties. Get on the ball!”
He stalked off into the wheelhouse. Engstrand glanced reproachfully at Willie and walked to the other side of the bridge. Willie stared out to sea, his face burning. “The boor, the big stupid egotistic boor,” he thought. “Looking for any excuse to throw his weight around. Picking on the signalman to humiliate me more. The sadist, the Prussian, the moron.”
CHAPTER 10
The Lost Message
At four o’clock the minesweepers formed a slanting line, a thousand yards apart, and began to launch their sweep gear. Willie went to the fantail to watch.
He could make no sense of the activity. The equipment was a foul tangle of greasy cables, shackles, floats, lines, and chains. Half a dozen deck hands stripped to the waist swarmed about under the eye of Maryk, uttering hoarse cries and warnings larded with horrible obscenities as they wrestled the junk here and there on the heaving fantail. Waves broke over their ankles when the ship rolled, and water sloshed around the gear. To Willie’s eye it was a scene of confusion, and panic. He surmised that the Caine crew were unfitted for their jobs, and were fulfilling the ancient adage:
When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.
After twenty minutes of this bawling and brawling, the boatswain’s mate in charge of the war dance, a chunky, frog-voiced, frantic chief named Bellison, shouted, “All set to starboard, Mr. Maryk!”
Willie, perched clear of the water on an immense steam windlass, expressed to himself a strong doubt that anything was really “set” in that heap of scrap metal.
“Keith,” yelled Maryk, “get clear of that windlass.”
Willie jumped into an arriving wave, soaking his trousers halfway to the knees; waded to the after-deckhouse ladder, and climbed up to see what would happen. The sailors cranked an egg-shaped paravane up on a crane. At a word from Maryk, they dumped all the gear over the side. Came clanks, rattles, splashes, yells, puffing of steam, creaking turns of the windlass, and a frenzy of running around, and a great cadenza of obscenity. Then sudden quiet ensued. The paravane was streaming neatly outward to starboard in a fanning arc, sinking slowly beneath the surface with a red float above it to mark the place. The serried cutting cable payed out from the windlass evenly. All was correct and orderly as a diagram in the minesweeping manual.
The wild scramble began again with the gear of the port paravane. Willie was no longer sure whether the faultless first launching had been a matter of luck or skill. When the turmoil and blasphemy reached their height as before he was inclined to attribute it to luck. But splash, grind, yowls, curses, silence-and the second paravane was streaming as neatly as the first. “I’ll be damned,” he said aloud.
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“Why?”
Willie jumped a little at the voice. Captain de Vriess was leaning over the bulwark beside him, watching the operation.
“Well, sir, it looked pretty sharp to me, that’s all.”
“That was the lousiest launching I’ve ever seen,” said De Vriess. “Hey, Steve, what in the Christ took you forty-five minutes?”
Maryk smiled up at him. “Hello, Captain. Why, I didn’t think the boys did too bad, for a four-month layoff. Look, sir, none of the other ships have even started to launch.”
“Who cares about those snafu buckets? We streamed at Noumea in thirty-eight.”
“Sir, that was after four days’ practice-”
“Well, I want it done in thirty tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
The dirty, sweating, ragged sailors stood around, hands resting on their belts, looking singularly self-satisfied under the captain’s criticism.
“Sir, it was my fault,” spoke up the boatswain’s mate. He began an alibi which sounded to Willie like this: “The port bandersnatch got fouled in the starboard rath when we tried to galumph the cutting cable so as not to trip the snozzle again. I had to unshackle the doppelganger and bend on two snarks instead so we could launch in a hurry.”
“Well,” said De Vriess, “couldn’t you have vorpaled the silabub or taken a turn on the chortlewort? That way the jaxo would be clear of the varse and you could forget about the dudelsak. It would have done the same thing.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bellison. “That might work okay. I’ll try it tomorrow.”
Willie’s heart sank. He was certain that if he sailed a hundred years on the Caine he would understand such abracadabra no better than he did at that moment. “Sir,” he said to the captain, “is there a standard time for launching the gear?”
“Book calls for one hour,” said De Vriess. “The standard on this ship is thirty minutes. I’ve never been able to make these stumblebums do it. Maybe your friend Queeg will have better luck.”
“That’s a curious use of the word ‘standard,’ sir,” ventured Willie.
De Vriess gave him a satiric look. “Well, that’s Navy jargon for you- All right,” he called down, “you of the minesweep detail. All things considered it wasn’t too terrible a job.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the sailors, grinning at each other:
The other minesweepers got their gear launched and an afternoon of practice maneuvers began. Willie was dizzied by the turns and twists and changing formations. He tried hard to follow what was happening. Once he went to the bridge and asked Carmody, the junior officer of the deck, to explain the proceedings. Carmody answered with extended gibberish about Baker Runs, George Runs, and Zebra Runs. Willie gathered at last by using his eyes that the ships were pretending to be in a mine field and simulating various emergencies and disasters. A lugubrious business, he thought. The sun was low and the clouds were reddening when word came over the p.a., “Cease present exercises. Recover sweep gear.” Willie at once returned to the after deckhouse, partly to learn what he could about hauling in paravanes, but mainly to enjoy the cursing of the sailors. He had never heard anything like it. There was a fine dithyrambic sweep to Caine obscenity in hot moments.
He wasn’t disappointed. The minesweep detail worked in a fever, racing against time to get the two paravanes aboard. They kept a constant watch on the two black balls hanging on the yardarms of the other ships; the drop of a ball would mean that a paravane had been recovered. In fifteen minutes the Caine dropped its ball on the port yardarm; and they had the starboard paravane in sight before the Moulton hauled down a ball. Lieutenant Maryk worked with the sailors, stripped to the waist, pouring sweat. “Come on,” he shouted, “Twenty-eight minutes so far! Best yet! Let’s get that damned egg aboard.” But at the last moment there was a calamity. The sailor Fuller, who was pulling the little red float out of the water, juggled it and dropped it. The float bobbed away in the ship’s wake, free.
The other sailors gathered around Fuller and discharged such a flood of inspired cursing that Willie wanted to applaud. Maryk sent word to the bridge. The Caine stopped and then backed slowly. Maryk tore off all his clothes and wrapped a line around his waist. “No sense fooling around with the gig. I’ll swim for the goddamn thing. Tell the captain to stop the screws,” he said to the chief, and dived over the side.
The sun had set. The float was a red dot on the purple waves, about two hundred yards off the port quarter. The sailors lined the rail, watching the first lieutenant’s head slowly approach the float, and Willie heard them muttering about sharks. “I saw a goddamn hammerhead five minutes ago,” Bellison said. “I’m damned if I’d swim for it. Save five minutes for the old man and get my behind snatched off-”
Somebody was tapping Willie on the shoulder. He turned impatiently. “Yes, yes, what is it?”
A radioman stood behind him with a flapping despatch in his hand. “This just came over Fox, sir. We’re the action addressee. Mr. Keefer says you got the coding duty-”
Willie took the message and glanced at it. “Okay, okay. I’ll break it in a few minutes.” He thrust the sheet in his pocket and looked to sea. Maryk’s head was barely visible now on the dark water. He had reached the float. He thrashed around in it for a minute or so, kicking up white foam, then leaped half out of the water and waved his arms. His shout came feebly on the wind, “Okay, haul in!” The sailors began to pull the wet line back aboard frantically. The float came cutting through the water with Maryk clinging to it.
Willie, tingling with excitement, scampered down the ladder to the fantail. He lost his footing on the slippery deck and fell. A wave of warm salty water broke over him, drenching him. He got himself up, spitting water, and grabbed a life line. The dripping float clanked on the deck. “Haul down the ball to starboard!” Bellison yelled. A dozen arms reached for Maryk as his head bobbed up near the propeller guard. He clambered aboard.
“Christ, sir, you didn’t have to do that,” said Bellison.
Maryk gasped, “What was the time of recovery?”
The telephone talker said, “Forty-one, sir, when the float got aboard.”
“Beat ’em all, sir,” said a sailor, pointing seaward. Black balls still hung at the yardarms of the other ships.
“That’s fine,” grinned Maryk. “Never have heard the end of it if one of those buckets beat us.” His eye fell on the bedraggled figure of Willie. “What the hell happened to you, Keith? Did you dive in, too?” The sailors noticed Willie now and snickered.
“Got too interested watching you,” said Willie. “That was great work.”
Maryk swept water from his broad brown chest and shoulders with his palms. “Hell, I’ve been looking for an excuse to take a dip.”
“Weren’t you worried about sharks?”
“Sharks don’t bother you if you keep moving. Hell,” said the first lieutenant, “I’d take a shark any day rather than the old man if Iron Duke Sammis beat him recovering sweep gear- Come on, Keith, you and me need new clothes.”
Willie dumped his sodden khakis in a heap in a corner of the clipping shack. He had completely forgotten the despatch in his pocket. There it lay, dissolving to a pulp inside the crumpled khakis, while the ship steamed through maneuvers for the next two days.
The weather was good, and with the novelty of the different minesweeping gadgets, electric, moored, and acoustic, for entertainment, Willie found himself enjoying the trip as an amused spectator. In his watches on the bridge he got on a little better with Captain de Vriess by making a mighty effort to please. Taking as his rule Tom Keefer’s dictum, “How would I do this if I were a fool?” he play-acted a struggling over-conscientious ensign. He stood erect for the whole four hours, peering to sea. He never spoke, except when spoken to, or to report an object he sighted through binoculars. Even if it seemed absurd to mention it-a floating log, a tin can, a spread of garbage dumped from a ship-he gravely announced it; and the captain invariably thanked him in pleased ton
es. The more he slipped into character as a plodding dolt, the better De Vriess seemed to like him.
On the third day the formation moved in to shallow waters near a beach and swept some dummy mines. Not till Willie saw the yellow-painted horned iron balls bobbing on the foamy blue waves did he truly realize that the fantastic rig of cables and paravanes was good for anything but races against time between the captains of minesweepers. He took a strong interest in this part of the show. Once the Caine narrowly missed a mine cut by the Moulton. Willie pictured what might have happened had the mine been a live one, and began to wonder whether he ought to wait six months before applying to the admiral for rescue.
The last sweep was completed two hours before sunset. There remained a chance that the ships could get back into Pearl Harbor before the submarine nets were closed for the night, by running for home at twenty knots. Unluckily the Moulton, which had the squadron commander aboard, lost a paravane in the last moments of recovery, and fished for it for an hour while the other vessels waited and the crews fretted. When the Moulton grappled its paravane at last the sun was setting. The four old sweepers had to steam all night outside the channel entrance in futile circles.
When they went in next morning, the Caine and Moulton were paired in one buoy berth. As soon as the gangplank was laid between the ships Willie got Gorton’s permission to cross over and visit Keggs.
He was startled by the difference between the two ships the moment he set foot on the other quarterdeck. In structure they were identical. It was hardly conceivable that they could look so unlike. There was no rust here, no splashes of green prime coats. The bulwarks and decks were a clean uniform gray. The cording on ladder railings was new-white. The leather wrappings of the life line, tightly sewed, were a natural rich brown, where those of the Caine were frayed, hung loose, and were covered with cracked gray paint. The dungarees of the sailors were clean, and the shirts tucked inside the trousers, whereas a flapping shirttail would have been a proper heraldic device for the Caine. Willie saw that it was not necessary for a DMS to look like his ship; it was only necessary for the outcast Caine to look like what it was.