by Herman Wouk
He was awakened one night to go on the midwatch after an hour and a half of dozing on the wardroom couch, and found that he could hardly stand. He fell down while groping around to make himself some coffee. He struggled into a blue woolen windbreaker, because the air streaming in from the ventilation duct felt cold and damp, and he went zigzagging across a deck that was wobbling like a room in an amusement park Crazy House. When he came topside, clutching the stanchion that held up the hatchway, the first thing he saw was a wall of greenish-black water on the port side, towering high over his head. As he opened his mouth to yell the wall fell away, replaced by a sky of torn moonlit clouds, and an equally horrendous wall rose on the other side of the ship. He inched up the bridge ladder, holding his hat in the expectation of a blast of wind, but there was very little wind. He found the bridge watch all-clinging to handholds in the dark wheelhouse, their bodies swaying back and forth with each roll. Even here, high on the bridge, when the ship heeled over Willie found himself looking upward at tossing water.
“Good Christ,” he said to Carmody, who had one arm braced through the back of the captain’s chair, “how long has this been going on?”
“How long has what been going on?”
“This rolling!”
“This isn’t rolling.” The rubber mats on the deck all slid sideward and heaped up against his legs.
Willie relieved Carmody, and as the watch wore on his terror abated. The Caine was apparently not going to founder. But it seemed an entirely reasonable possibility to him that it might come apart. At the extreme limit of a roll, the whole ship groaned from end to end like a sick man, and Willie could see the bulkheads bending and swaying. It struck him forcibly that nothing now stood between him and the black cold waters except the guess of an engineer (now probably dead) made thirty years ago as to how much stress such a ship should be built to stand.
Evidently he had. guessed well, for the Caine kept up this careening into the next day, and held together.
Willie went up to the forecastle after a lunch of roast pork, feeling oddly aware of the fact that he had a stomach. He was not seasick, of that he was certain. But he could feel the stomach hanging there in his midriff, palpitating, full, and hard at work at its usual tasks. This second sight into his body induced in Willie a desire for a lot of fresh air blowing in his face. He pulled open the watertight door to the forecastle, and saw Stilwell in a pea jacket and wool cap crouched by number-one gun, tying down the blue canvas cover, which had worked loose and was flapping loudly.
“Afternoon, Mr. Keith.”
“Afternoon, Stilwell.” Willie dogged the door shut and leaned against the life lines, gripping the stanchion. The wind and cold spray in his face were delightful. When the ship rolled to port be could see the convoy plunging along through the gray choppy swells.
“How do you like the rolling, sir?” called Stilwell, over the rushing and bubbling of the bow waves.
“What rolling?” said Willie, with a brave grin.
The sailor laughed. He slid across the deck to the life line and made his way cautiously to the ensign. “Sir, did you ever talk to the captain about-you know, about my leave?”
A little ashamed, Willie said, “Haven’t had a chance, Stilwell. But I’m sure it will be okay.”
The sailor’s face went gloomy. “Well, thanks, sir.”
“I’ll talk to him this afternoon. Come to the clipping shack at three and see me.”
“Thanks a million, Mr. Keith.” The gunner’s mate smiled, undogged the door, and slipped through to the well deck.
Willie took several deep breaths of the medicinal wind, and went below to the captain’s cabin.
Queeg was lying on his bunk in his underwear, fiddling - with a wooden Chinese puzzle, a ball of interlocking pieces. The captain had confiscated it one day, upon poking his head into the radar shack and finding the watch-stander playing with it. He had been working at it ever since, and though he told Gorton he had solved it nobody had ever seen the pieces apart. “Yes, Willie, what can I do for you?” he said, jiggling the puzzle under his reading lamp.
Willie stated his errand, while the captain worked away at his puzzle. “... So, sir, I just thought I’d check and be sure. Did you mean Stilwell’s restriction to apply during the overhaul?”
“What do you think I meant?”
“Well, I didn’t think so, sir-”
“Why not? When a man’s in jail for a year they don’t let him out for two weeks at Christmas, do they? Restriction to the ship means restriction to the ship.”
The close air in the room, and the swaying deck, and the jiggling of the puzzle before his eyes began to trouble Willie. “But-but sir, isn’t this a little different? He’s not a criminal-and he’s been fighting a war for two years overseas-”
“Willie, if you start getting sentimental about naval discipline you’re licked. Every man in a brig or a guardhouse in the forward area has been fighting a war. When a war is on you’ve got to get tougher with enlisted men, not easier.” (Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle.) “They’re under a strain, and there’s a lot of damned unpleasant duty to do, and if you let up the pressure even once your whole goddamn organization’s apt to blow up in your face.” (Jiggle, jiggle.) “The sooner you learn that elementary fact, Willie, the better morale officer you’ll be.”
Willie’s stomach put in an appearance again, throbbing and heavy. He pulled his hypnotized glance away from the puzzle, and his eyes fell on the wooden crate under the captain’s washbasin. “Sir, there are offenses and offenses,” he said, his voice a little weaker. “Stilwell is a good sailor. Before you came aboard, nobody bore down on these men for peeking at a magazine during a watch. I know it was wrong but-”
“All the more reason for bearing down now, Willie. You tell me a better way to get my wishes obeyed on this ship and I’ll take it under consideration. Do you think all reading on watch would stop if I gave Stilwell a letter of commendation, hey?”
Willie’s dizziness got the better of his discretion and he blurted out, “Sir, I’m not sure that reading on watch is any greater violation than transporting whisky aboard ship.”
The captain laughed amiably. “You’ve got a point there. But rank hath its privileges, Willie. An admiral can wear a baseball cap on the bridge. That doesn’t mean the helmsmen can. No, Willie, our job is to make damn sure that the enlisted men do as we say, not as we do.” (Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle.) “And, as I say, the one way to make them do as we say is to get goddamn tough with them and make it stick.”
Willie felt himself breaking out in a sweat.
The captain droned on, “Now, if it was Stilwell’s tough luck to get caught first so that I had to make him the horrible example, well, as I say, reading on watch has got to be knocked off on this ship, and” (jiggle, jiggle) “it’s just too bad that he’s worried about his wife, but I’ve got the whole U.S.S. Caine to worry about, and” (jiggle) “sometimes one man has to suffer for-”
But he left the sentence unfinished, because at that point Willie Keith made a queer stifled noise and threw up violently. The ensign managed to turn his green face away from Queeg just in time. Gasping apologies, he seized a towel and began dabbing at the deck. Queeg was surprisingly genial about it. “Never mind, Willie. Send a steward’s mate in here and go topside for some fresh air. Lay off the pork till you get your sea legs.”
So ended Willie’s plea for Stilwell. He could hardly face the sailor, but Stilwell took the news with a stiff blank face. “Thanks for trying anyway, sir,” he said dryly.
Another day and another passed of rough seas and lowering skies; of rolling and pitching, cold winds, and cold damp eating into bones softened by tropic warmth; of a treadmill of watches in a wheelhouse dank and gloomy by day and danker and gloomier by night; of sullen silent sailors and pale dog-tired officers, of meals in the wardroom eaten in silence, with the captain at the head of the table ceaselessly rolling the balls in his fingers and saying nothing except an infrequent grumpy sent
ence about the progress of the work requests. Willie lost track of time. He stumbled from the bridge to his coding, from coding to correcting publications, from corrections back up to the bridge, from the bridge to the table for an unappetizing bolted meal, from the table to the clipping shack for sleep which never went uninterrupted for more than a couple of hours. The world became narrowed to a wobbling iron shell on a waste of foamy gray, and the business of the world was staring out at empty water or making red-ink insertions in the devil’s own endless library of mildewed unintelligible volumes.
One morning Willie stirred in his bunk, opened his eyes, and felt a strange and delicious sensation: the bunk was neither rolling nor pitching, but remaining level. He bounded out of the clipping shack in his underwear. The ship was gliding between the green banks of a channel about a mile wide. The sky was blue, the air cool and mild. The Caine moved as steadily as a ferryboat. Willie craned his neck out over the life lines and peered forward. Above the green round bulge of a hill he saw the piers of the Golden Gate Bridge, misty red, far inland. His eyes filled with tears; he dived back into the clipping shack.
He was on the bridge when the Caine steamed under the vaulting crimson span. But his poetic thoughts were jangled by a colloquy between the captain and Gorton, standing behind him.
“Kay, when we pass Alcatraz we’ll head over to Oakland. Give me a course, Burt.”
“Sir, Pier 91 isn’t in Oakland-”
“I know. We’re going to lie off Oakland for a while before we tie up at the pier.”
“But sir-”
“What the hell is all this arguing for, Burt? I want a course to Oakland!”
“Sir, I just wanted to say there’s a rugged tide current at Pier 91, five knots or better. It’s slack water now, we can make our landing easy. If we delay for an hour it’ll be a damn tough approach-”
“Let me worry about landing this ship. You give me a course to Oakland.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Mister Keith. Are you doing anything besides sight-seeing?” Willie shriveled away from the bulkhead and faced the captain. Queeg, strangely dapper in a blue-and-gold bridge coat, white hat, and white silk scarf, was scanning the widening bay through binoculars. “No, sir-”
“Kay. That crate in my cabin-get yourself a working party and load it into the gig. You’ll be boat officer.”
At the expense of sundry mashed fingers, splinters under fingernails, crushed toes, and a spectacular fireworks of obscenity, the working party lodged the captain’s stone-heavy crate in the boat. Willie’s contribution was to stand well clear of the murderous box as it teetered in the air, and to make occasional mild suggestions which were totally ignored.
The Caine lay to near the Oakland shore, and the gig went puttering toward a concrete landing at the foot of a deserted street. Queeg sat in the stern sheets, his feet on the crate, rolling the balls and squinting around at the bay. Willie marveled at the crew of the gig. Horrible, Meatball, and Mackenzie were unrecognizable; washed, combed, shaved, powdered, dressed in starched whites, they seemed to be of a different race of man than the dismal savages who had first brought Willie to the Caine. He knew the reason for the Cinderella change, of course; the sailors wanted their leave, and were afraid of Queeg.
Once the motor died. The captain snapped irritably, after the sailors had fussed with the engine for a couple of minutes, “If this gig isn’t under way in thirty seconds someone’s going to be goddamn sorry.” Agonized thrashing of arms, and banging of wrenches, and sulphurous cursing ensued; and mercifully the motor started up again at the twenty-eighth second, and the gig reached the shore. “Kay,” said Queeg, leaping off the gunwale to the landing, “bear a hand with that crate. I’m late as hell.”
Two of the working party jumped to the dock, and the third sailor with Horrible and Meatball got one end of the crate tip over the gunwale with much heaving and grunting. The men on the dock seized the crate and pulled; those in the gig pushed from below. The box hardly moved.
“Well, well, what’s taking so long?”
“Sir, she won’t slide,” panted Horrible, his black hair falling over his eyes. “Too heavy.”
“Well, stand up on the gunwale and lift her then. Haven’t you any brains?” The captain looked around and saw Mackenzie standing on the dock with the bowline in his hand, staring vacantly at the struggle. “Well, what are you doing, standing there with your thumb in your bum and your mind in neutral? Bear a hand.”
Mackenzie at once dropped the line and jumped to help the men on the dock. This was a mistake on the part of captain and sailor alike. Mackenzie had been performing the necessary function of holding the gig close to the dock. With the bowline free, the gig fell away, imperceptibly at first and then faster. A crack of open water widened under the crate. “Oh Christ!” gasped Horrible, tottering on the gunwale, his fingers under one edge of the crate. “The bowline! Someone grab the bowline!” Mackenzie let go of the crate and rushed back to the rope. The men on the dock staggered. There was an instant of chaotic yelling, cursing, and crunching, over which rose the soprano scream of Queeg, “Watch out for that goddamn crate!”
Horrible and the crate fell into the water with a tremendous splash, soaking Queeg. Horrible floated, a blob of white on the muddy water. The crate went down like an anvil, with a bubbly groan. There was a moment of gruesome silence. Queeg, dripping, leaned over the edge of the landing and peered down into the brown water. “Kay,” he said. “Get out your grappling irons.”
Half an hour of grappling efforts followed. Queeg smoked up half a pack of cigarettes, taking only a few puffs each time and dashing the cigarettes into the water. Horrible crouched on the dock, his teeth chattering loudly.
“Sir,” said Meatball at last in a weak, small voice.
“Yes?”
“Sir, pardon me, I think she’s sunk in ooze. Even if we find her I don’t think we can bring her up. This line won’t take the strain, and anyway I think the grappling iron would just come splintering out of the wood. Pardon me, sir, but that’s what I think.”
Queeg stared at the water where the crate had vanished. “Kay. I think you’re right, at that. It’s just too goddamn bad.”
The gig was halfway back to the Caine before he spoke again. “Willie, who was in charge of that working party?”
“I-I guess I was, sir.”
“I guess you were, too. Well, then, how do you explain that fiasco?”
“Sir, I beg your pardon, you didn’t tell me to take charge of the unloading-”
“I don’t tell you to wipe your nose, either, Mr. Keith, when it needs it. There are certain things that an officer is assumed to understand for himself.” The captain stared out from under his eyebrows at nothing for several seconds and said, “I don’t appreciate a foul-up by a working party for which you’re responsible, Willie, especially when the foul-up costs me about a hundred and ten dollars.”
“Sir, that crate is in pretty close to shore, after all. I’m sure the harbor police can grapple for it and recover it, if you-”
“Are you out of your mind?” said the captain. “And have them ask me about the contents, hey? Sometimes you’re not so bright, Willie- Damn. Friend of mine up in Oakland would have taken that crate and shipped it back home for me- Well.” After a pause he added, “No, you’d just better think it over, Willie, and-well, just try to see where you bitched, things up, and what you’d better do about it.”
“Do you want me to submit a written report, sir?”
“Just think it over,” said Queeg irritably.
Seventy or eighty people, most of them women, were crowded on Pier 91 when the old minesweeper drew near. They fluttered handkerchiefs and uttered thin sweet cries, and in their brightly colored coats they made as decorative a welcoming display as rows of flags.
“Kay,” said Captain Queeg, posted on the port wing, squinting unhappily at the tide current swirling past the dock. “All engines slow to one third. Line-handling parties stand by
the port side.”
Willie went to the starboard wing out of the captain’s sight, and began scanning the women on the wharf through binoculars. All over the ship sailors crowded the rails and life lines, trying to find familiar faces, shouting and waving.
The Caine, with its screws beating at five knots, drifted impotently sidewise, making no headway toward the dock against the current. “Kay,” said the captain, rolling the steel balls swiftly, “I can see this approach is going to be fun- Tell the line handlers to, stand by their line-throwing guns. All ahead two thirds! Right full rudder!”
The Caine churned forward against the brown tumbling tide, and swung in toward the pier. Gray gulls wheeled and darted between the ship and the dock, making raucous, jeering noises. In a few seconds the ship drew parallel to the dock-but yards and yards of open water lay between. “Kay, we’ll breast her in! All stop! Shoot those heaving lines over!”
The line-throwing guns cracked fore and aft, and the crowd cheered as two arcs of white cord came sailing across the water. The forward line reached the dock, but the after line splashed short. The Caine drifted away from the pier. “Christ, what’s the matter with that after line-handling party?” stormed Queeg. “Tell ’em to shoot over another line on the double!”
Gorton, standing at the captain’s elbow, said, “It’s not going to reach, sir. We’re drifting too fast-”
“Why are we drifting too fast? Because these goddamn line handlers are all goddamn zombies! Kay. Recover all lines! I’m going to make another approach.”
The Caine backed out into the main channel. Willie Keith’s heart gave a mighty throb, for he suddenly saw May Wynn at the far end of the pier, almost hidden by women in front of her. She wore a perky gray hat with a veil, a gray traveling suit, and a white fur shoulder piece. She looked as she had in Willie’s waking dreams, not a touch less beautiful or desirable. She was peering anxiously at the ship. Willie wanted to dance and scream, but he refrained, and merely took off the hat which made him a nameless naval officer. In a moment May’s eyes turned to him, and her face became brilliant with joy. She raised one white-gloved hand and waved. Willie returned the wave with a careless, masculine dip of the binoculars, but he became weak in the knees all the same, and prickles of pleasure ran along his skin.