When the despatch came, it was New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July, and every man’s birthday and wedding day aboard the Caine. Willie Keith, too, felt his blood bubbling, though by Caine standard he was a Johnny-come-lately who had scarcely wiped off the lipstick of his last state-side farewell. He wrote to May and to his mother, hinting strongly to May that her presence on the pier when the Caine pulled into San Francisco would be an overwhelmingly fine surprise (he omitted any such hint to his mother). He composed the letter to May in the clipping shack, crawling into his hole like an animal to enjoy his delight in dark solitude; and he took long pauses in the writing, with the ink caking on the nib of his fountain pen, while he stared at the paper and his mind rioted through Mohammedan fantasies.
A shadow fell across the page. Looking up, he saw Stilwell standing in the doorway. The sailor wore the immaculate dungarees and highly polished shoes in which he had appeared for trial at captain’s mast that morning, shortly before the arrival of the despatch.
“Yes, Stilwell?” said Willie sympathetically.
As officer of the deck Willie had recorded Stilwell’s sentence in the log: six months’ restriction to the ship. He had observed the mast ceremony on the quarterdeck with some wonderment—the solemn array of scared offenders in stiff new blue dungarees, the accusing officers lined up at attention opposite the culprits, and Queeg, calm and pleasant, receiving the prisoners’ red service folders one by one from Jellybelly. It was a curious sort of justice. So far as Willie knew, all the offenders had been placed on report by order of Captain Queeg. Ensign Harding, for instance, appeared to accuse Stilwell, but he had not seen the sailor reading on watch. Since Captain Queeg never placed anyone on report himself, but always turned to the nearest officer and said, “I want this man placed on report,” the triangle of justice was maintained in form, accuser, accused, and judge. And Queeg was ceremoniously interested and surprised by the accuser’s narration of the offense which he himself had ordered reported. Willie had watched this strange business for a while and had indignantly concluded that it was an outrage against civil liberties, and constitutional rights, and habeas corpus, and eminent domain, and bills of attainder, and every other half-remembered phrase which meant that an American was entitled to a fair shake.
“Sir,” said Stilwell, “you’re the morale officer, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” said Willie. He swung his legs to the deck, put aside his stationery box, and screwed his fountain pen shut, converting himself with these motions from a girl-hungry youngster to a naval functionary.
He liked Stilwell. There are young men, slim, well built, and clean-faced, with bright eyes and thick hair, and an open, cheery look, who invite good feeling, and make things pleasant wherever they are, almost in the way pretty girls do, by the pure morning light that is on them; the gunner’s mate was one of these.
“Well, sir,” said Stilwell, “I got a problem.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Stilwell plunged into a rambling tale, the meat of which was that he had a wife and child in Idaho, and that he had reasons to doubt his wife’s faithfulness. “What I want to know is, sir, does this restriction mean I don’t get to go home on leave? I haven’t been home in two years, sir.”
“I don’t think it does, Stilwell, I can’t imagine that it would. Any man who’s been in the combat area as long as you have is entitled to go home unless he’s committed murder or something.”
“Is that the regulations, sir, or is it just how you figure it?”
“It’s how I figure it, Stilwell, but, unless I tell you otherwise, and I’ll find out pretty damn soon, well, you can count on it.”
“What I want to know, sir—can I write home that I’m coming, like all the other guys are doing?”
The answer to this, as Willie well knew, was that Stilwell had better wait until the captain’s views were explored. But the hungry appeal in the sailor’s face, and Willie’s own slight defensiveness about his lack of information, led him to say, “I’m sure you can, Stilwell.”
The gunner’s mate brightened so marvelously that Willie was glad he had ventured to be positive. “Thank you, Mr. Keith, thanks a whole lot,” stammered Stilwell, his mouth trembling a little, his eyes glistening. “You don’t know what that means to me, sir.” He put on his hat, straightened, and saluted Willie as though he were an admiral. The ensign returned the salute, nodding pleasantly.
“Okay, Stilwell,” he said. “Glad to be chaplain for you any time.” Willie resumed writing the letter to May Wynn; and in the spangled excitement of the images that went shimmering through his brain he forgot the conversation.
The talk in the wardroom at lunch the next day was warm and jolly for the first time since the change of command. Old jokes were revived about romantic escapades in Australia and New Zealand. Maryk took the worst drubbing, for a liaison with a middle-aged waitress in an Auckland teashop. The number of moles on the lady’s face was thoroughly discussed, Gorton putting the number at seven and Maryk at two, with votes for figures in between from the others.
“Well, I think Steve is right, after all,” said Keefer. “I guess two were moles. The rest were warts.”
Whittaker, the steward’s mate, who with his usual mournful expression was passing around a platter of fried ham, suddenly broke into a scream of laughter and dropped the platter, narrowly missing the captain’s head. The red greasy meat slices tumbled all over the deck. In holiday mood, Captain Queeg said, “Whittaker, if you have to throw food at me don’t throw meat, throw vegetables, they’re cheaper.” By wardroom tradition any witticism of a captain is automatically hilarious. There was great laughter.
Maryk said to the fat exec, “Well, okay, if she did have seven moles, at least she was real. I’m not satisfied, like some guys, with a lot of French magazines and postcards.”
“Steve, I have a wife to be faithful to,” said Gorton cheerily. “She can’t divorce me for looking at pictures. But if I were a free agent like you, and couldn’t do better than that New Zealand wart hog, I think I’d go in for postcards.”
“Damn clever idea I came across once,” said Queeg, obviously in a rare good humor, for he usually took no part in wardroom chatter. The officers fell silent and listened respectfully for the captain’s table talk. “Speaking of postcards, that is. I don’t know how I got on this mailing list but I did and—well, all you had to do was send this company a dollar a month, see, and they sent you these pictures, real big and glossy prints, about six by four, I guess.” He indicated a rectangle with his two thumbs and forefingers. “Well, what was so clever—you know, you can’t send pictures of naked ladies through the mail, well—these gals weren’t naked, no sir, they had on the prettiest little pink pants and bras you ever saw, all nice and legal. The only thing was, their undies were washable. All you had to do was pass a wet cloth over the picture and—well, there you were—Damn clever.” He looked around with a happy snigger. Most of the officers managed to produce smiles. Keefer lit a cigarette, covering his face with his cupped palms, and Willie stuffed a whole slice of ham into his mouth.
“By the way,” the captain went on, “none of you fellows have used up your liquor ration at the club, have you? Or if anyone has, say so.” None of the officers spoke up. “That’s fine. Anybody have any objection to selling his ration to me?”
The ration was five quarts of bottled liquor per month, which could be bought at the officers’ wine mess in the Navy Yard for a fraction of the price in the United States. Queeg caught his officers off guard; they hadn’t been thinking ahead to the cost of liquor back home. With varying shades of grumpiness they all consented except Harding.
“Captain,” he said plaintively, “I plan for my wife and me to drink up my year’s pay, and anything I can save will be a big help.”
Queeg laughed appreciatively, and excused him. That same evening, therefore, the Caine’s officers, shepherded by the captain, lined up at the liquor counter of the club and bought some thirty quarts of scotch and rye whisky. Captain Queeg directed them one by one, with many thanks, as they came away from the counter carrying armloads of bottles, to a jeep that stood outside in the gloom of the driveway. When the jeep had taken on a full cargo the captain drove off, leaving the knot of Caine officers looking at each other.
Carpenter’s Mate Second Class Langhorne was summoned to the captain’s cabin next morning at seven-thirty. He found the captain, in wrinkled stained gabardines, leaning over his bunk chewing a dead cigar stub, and counting an array of bottles spread across the blanket. “Hello, Langhorne. What kind of crate can you fix me up for thirty-one bottles?” The carpenter, a dour Missourian with a long bony face, protruding lower jaw, and lank black hair, goggled at the contraband. Captain Queeg said with a chuckle and a wink, “Medical supplies, Langhorne, medical supplies. Outside your province, and if asked, you’ve never seen these bottles and know nothing about them.”
“Yes, sir,” said the carpenter. “Fix up a crate, say, three by two, something like that—pack it with excelsior—”
“Excelsior, hell, this stuff is precious. I want partitions between the bottles and excelsior packed between the partitions—”
“Sir, we ain’t got no thin stuff for partitions, no plywood nor nothin’—”
“Well, hell, get some sheet tin from the metalsmith’s shop.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll fix it up nice, sir.”
Late that afternoon Langhorne came staggering into the wardroom, his face pouring sweat, bearing on his back a box made of fresh-sawed white boards. He stumbled into Queeg’s cabin and let the crate down to the deck with fearsome grunts and grimaces, as though it were a piano. Mopping his streaming face with a red bandanna, he said, “Jesus, sir, them sheet-lead partitions are heavy—”
“Sheet lead?”
“Metalsmiths were fresh out of sheet tin, sir—”
“But Christ, lead. Good stiff cardboard would have done just as well—”
“I can rip them lead sheets out, sir, and make it over—”
“No, leave it as it is,” grumbled Queeg. “It just means some seamen are going to be getting some healthy exercise in a few days, which is just as well—Probably I can use a supply of sheet lead back home, at that,” he muttered.
“Pardon me, sir?”
“Never mind. Get some excelsior and pack away those bottles.” He pointed to the treasure, ranged on the deck under the washbowl.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Now hear this. General drills will commence at 1400.”
The Caine was steaming in her position at the right end of the semicircular screen of escorts, which plowed in the van of the convoy of four fleet oilers, two transports, and three merchant ships. They were far out of sight of land, rocking over calm blue water. The ships were disposed in a neat pattern on the sunlit sea.
Ensign Keith, junior officer of the deck, was greatly enjoying this voyage. No submarines had been reported east of Hawaii for a year, but still, there was no doubt at all that Willie Keith was JOOD on a ship which was sniffing for Jap submersibles. If the OOD should drop dead or fall over the side it was conceivable that he, Ensign Keith, might take the conn, sink a submarine, and win great glory. It was not likely—but it was possible, whereas it was not possible, for example, that his mother might do it. The OOD, Keefer, added to his exaltation by putting him in charge of the zigzag plan, allowing him to give the orders to the helm. Willie tried to snap the orders out at the instant when the second hand of the bridge chronometer was cleaving the dot over twelve o’clock. The war had at last begun for him.
Captain Queeg came on the bridge at two minutes before two, squinting around in an irritated way, followed by Gorton, who had a whipped-dog look. The exec had, in fact, just received a raking for his failure to conduct general drills more often, and was mentally composing the opening paragraphs of a written report explaining why he hadn’t held them. Queeg had come across a CincPac letter in his correspondence that morning, desiring written reports from all ships on the number of drills conducted each month. “Kay,” said the captain to Engstrand. “Hoist ‘I am conducting general drills.’ ”
The signalman ran up a halyard display of colored flags. Willie, at a nod from the captain, walked to the red-painted general alarm handle in the wheelhouse, and yanked it. Then, while the whang-whang-whang shook the air, he inspected with satisfaction his image in one of the bridge windowpanes. Confronting him was the shadowy figure of a World War II sea warrior, complete with bulbous helmet, bulky gray kapok life jacket and attached flashlight, and gray flash-burn paint on his face and hands. Everybody on the bridge was similarly dressed.
Elsewhere on the ship things were different. The Caine crew, after more than a year of general quarters under Japanese air attacks, followed by a couple of months of Pearl Harbor indolence, were not inclined to take pains with a mock general alarm in the peaceful waters between Honolulu and San Francisco. Half of them appeared at their battle stations minus either helmet or life jacket, or both. Queeg peered here and there, frowning horribly.
“Mr. Keefer!”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to make the following announcement over the loudspeaker: ‘Every man who is not wearing a helmet or a life jacket is docked one day’s leave in the United States. Every man who is wearing neither is deprived of three days’ leave. The names are to be reported at once via the telephone talkers to the bridge.’ ”
Keefer looked stunned. He stammered, “Sir, that’s kind of tough—”
“Mister Keefer,” said the captain, “I did not ask you to pass an opinion on such disciplinary measures as I deem necessary for the instruction and safety of my crew. If these men are going to commit suicide by coming to GQ unprotected, well, nobody is going to say it’s because I didn’t impress on them the importance of wearing battle gear. Make the announcement.”
The men at the gun stations, hearing the words from the loudspeakers, could be seen turning their heads toward the bridge, their faces showing incredulity and rage. Then a boiling activity began among them, and helmets and life jackets began to appear magically, mushrooming all over the ship and passing from hand to hand.
“Now I want that knocked off!” roared Queeg. “I want those names, and I don’t want any man putting on any jacket or helmet until every single name is turned in to the bridge! Mr. Keefer, you announce that!”
“What shall I announce, sir?”
“Don’t be so goddamn stupid, sir! Announce that they’re to stop putting on that goddamn gear and report those names to the bridge!”
Keefer’s announcement blared over the decks: “Now knock off putting on gear. Turn in names of all men without gear to the bridge.”
Sailors were throwing helmets and life jackets from concealed places up to the deckhouses; a rain of the gear was flying through the air. Queeg screamed, “Send for the master-at-arms! I want whoever’s throwing those helmets and jackets put on report!”
“Chief Bellison, master-at-arms,” droned Keefer into the microphone, “please report to the bridge on the double.”
“Not to the bridge, you ass,” screeched Queeg, “tell him to go behind the galley deckhouse and arrest those men!”
“Belay that last word,” said Keefer, turning his face away from the captain to grin, “Chief Bellison, lay aft of the galley deckhouse and arrest whoever’s throwing helmets and life jackets.”
The words had scarcely died in the speakers when the deluge of gear stopped. It had served its purpose, however. There was gear on the deckhouses to spare for all hands, and they were rapidly dressing themselves. Queeg ran frantically here and there on the bridge, watching the men disobeying his orders wholesale, and yelled, “Stop putting on that gear! You, down there!… Come here, Mr. Gorton! What’s the name of that man on number-three gun? Put him on report!”
“Which one, sir?”
“Hell, the redheaded one. He just put on a helmet. I saw him!”
“Sir, if he’s got a helmet on I can’t see his hair.”
“Christ on a crutch, how many redheaded men are there on that gun?”
“Well, sir, I believe there’s three. Wingate, Parsons, Dulles—no, Dulles is more of a blond—but I think maybe he’s on gun four now, ever since—”
“Oh, Christ, forget it,” snapped Queeg. “Of all the lousy fouled-up failures to execute orders I’ve ever seen, Burt, this is the worst! The worst.”
By this time every man aboard the Caine was wearing a helmet and a life jacket. Queeg peered around the ship, with an angry balked glare. “Kay,” he said. “Kay. I see these birds think they have me licked.”
He walked into the wheelhouse, and picked up the microphone. “This is the captain speaking,” he said, and the angry tone filtered through all the distortion of the speakers. “Now, I am displeased to note that some misguided sailors on this ship believe they can pull a fast one on their captain. They are very much mistaken. I have asked for the names of the men who came to GQ out of uniform. The names don’t seem to be forthcoming. Kay. Since I have no other way of dealing out justice to the numerous cowards who are disobeying my orders to turn in their names, I am hereby depriving every man on this ship of three days’ leave in the States. The innocent must suffer with the guilty, and you’ll simply have to punish the guilty ones among yourselves for bringing this penalty on the whole crew—Kay. Now proceed with general drills.”
The convoy ran into stormy seas halfway to San Francisco, and Willie Keith began to get a clearer idea of the limitations of World War I destroyers. Towing targets on the smiling seas around Hawaii, the Caine had done plenty of rolling, and Willie had been proud of his sea legs and his quiet stomach; now he realized that he had been a little premature in congratulating himself.
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 wooden 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 he 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 helmsman 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 sentence 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 up 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.
“All right, we’ll try again,” he heard the captain shout, “and if there’s any more doping-off by the line-handling parties it’ll be too goddamn bad for a lot of people!”
Queeg tore in toward the dock at fifteen knots, swung the ship hard right, and backed the engines, in an apparent attempt to duplicate his historic red-hot landing alongside the fuel dock in Hawaii. But luck or skill did not favor him with the same hair-raising success this time. He backed down too late. The Caine came crashing into the wharf at an angle of about twenty degrees, still going fast. A hideous splintering din arose, mingled with the shrieks of the lady spectators scurrying to the other side of the wharf.
“Back down emergency full! Emergency full!” squeaked the captain, as the destroyer, its bow imbedded in the dock, quivered like an arrow shot into a tree trunk. The Caine pulled clear in a moment, with more tearing and banging, leaving a monstrous shaving several feet thick and twenty yards long gouged out of the pier.
“God damn this current, why don’t they have a goddamn tug standing by when a ship has to go alongside?”
Willie shrank out of the captain’s sight, and flattened against the charthouse bulkhead, as he had often seen the signalmen do. With his girl almost within his grasp, and an infuriated captain loose, it was time to be invisible.
“Kay, we’ll try once more,” announced Queeg, as the old ship backed into open water, “and this time we’d better make it, for the sake of all hands, that’s all I’ve got to say!—All ahead two thirds!”
The Caine shuddered and started forward again.
“Right full rudder! All engines stop!”
Willie cautiously came up to the bulwark and saw that the Caine was slipping fairly into position alongside the dock, except that the bow was closer than the stern.
“Kay, let’s get that stern in now! Port back one third.”
“Port, sir?” said Jellybelly at the engine telegraph, in a surprised tone.
Queeg screamed, “Yes, port, and ring it up, God damn it!… Kay! Get those lines over!”
Ensign Keith caught another good look at his sweetheart’s face. He was dizzy with love and longing.
“What the hell is the matter with that after line-handling party?” screeched Queeg, and on the instant came the pop of the line-throwing gun. But the current, and Queeg’s unfortunate mistake of backing the wrong screw, had swiveled the stern too far out, and the line fell into the water again. Meantime the men of the forecastle, with desperate speed, had gotten one manila line over to the dock, where the waiting sailors had secured it to a bollard. By this one tether the Caine now hung precariously, swinging out so that it was perpendicular to the wharf.
As the ship swung so, the starboard wing came in view of the dock again, and to Ensign Keith’s ears came a cry of a very familiar voice: “Will—EE ! Will—EE darling!” His mother stood near the manila line, waving a handkerchief!
Queeg came bolting through the wheelhouse and almost knocked Willie down as he dashed for the rail. “Mr. Keith, get out from underfoot! Signalman, signalman, raise that tug!”
With the help of the passing tug, the ship’s stern was pushed in toward the dock. The ladies on the dock sent up a derisive cheer, not unmixed with hoots, and catcalls, and inquiries as to whether the ship belonged to the Chinese Navy, when the Caine was finally secured. Queeg came into the pilothouse, his face white, his forehead crawling with wrinkles, his eyes glaring out at nothing. “Officer of the deck!”
Lieutenant Maryk followed him through the door. “Officer of the deck, aye aye.”
“Kay,” said Queeg, with his back to Maryk, rubbing the steel balls in his fingers so that they made a loud rasp. “You will pass the following word: ‘Due to the lousy seamanship of the after line-handling party, the entire crew is deprived of two days’ leave.’ ”
Maryk stared at the captain, his blunt face showing disbelief and disgust. He did not move. After a few seconds the captain whirled. “Well? What are you waiting for, Mr. Maryk? Pass the word.”
“Pardon me, Captain, if I’m talking out of turn, but that’s kind of rugged, sir. After all, there wasn’t much the guys could—”
“Mister Maryk, let me remind you that I am captain of this ship! If I get another word of back talk from you I will triple the penalty and include all the officers as well. You pass that word.”
Maryk wet his lips. He went to the squawk box, pressed the lever, and said, “Now hear this. Due to the lousy seamanship of the after line-handling party, the entire crew is deprived of two days’ leave.” The snap of the lever, as he released it, echoed in the wheelhouse.
“Thank you, Mr. Maryk. And let me tell you that I don’t appreciate your grandstand play in the presence of the bridge watch in a matter of discipline. I consider it conduct unbecoming an officer, amounting to insubordination, and it will be reflected in your fitness report.”
Head down, the captain hurried from the wheelhouse and trampled down the bridge ladder. All over the ship, and on the dock, where the announcement had been clearly heard, faces were drawn with shock and dismay—young faces of sailors, weary faces of chiefs, pretty faces of sweethearts, and old faces, such as the face of Willie Keith’s mother. Mrs. Keith did not yet have the consolation of realizing that Ensign Keith was an officer and therefore exempt from the penalty.
When the gangplank was put over, Willie was one of the first to disembark. He saw no escape from his situation; it would simply have to be faced. Mrs. Keith was standing at the foot of the gangway; and May, her expression a touching mixture of confusion, gladness, and fear, had placed herself directly at the mother’s elbow. Mrs. Keith embraced Willie wildly as he set foot on United States soil once more—if a wharf, that is, can qualify as soil. “Darling, darling, darling!” she exclaimed. “Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you close again!”
Willie disengaged himself gently, smiling at May. “Mother,” he said, taking her hand and May’s hand, “I’d like you to meet—ah—Marie Minotti.”