A steamship, not being a slave to the wind like a sailing vessel, is superior to ordinary difficulties of storms. A warship is a special kind of steamship, built not for capaciousness and economy, but for power. Even the minesweeper Caine could oppose to the gale a force of some thirty thousand horsepower; energy enough to move a weight of half a million tons one foot in one minute. The ship itself weighed little more than a thousand tons. It was a gray old bantam bursting with strength for emergencies.
But surprising things happen when nature puts on a freak show like a typhoon, with wind gusts up to a hundred and fifty miles per hour or more. The rudder, for instance, can become useless. It works by dragging against the water through which it is passing; but if the wind is behind the ship, and blows hard enough, the water may start piling along as fast as the rudder so that there is no drag at all. Then the ship will yaw or even broach to. Or the sea may push one way on the hull, and the wind another, and the rudder a third, so that the resultant of the forces is very erratic response of the ship to the helm, varying from minute to minute, or from second to second.
It is also theoretically possible that while the captain may want to turn his ship in one direction, the wind will be pushing so hard in the other direction that the full force of the engines will not suffice to bring the ship’s head around. In that case the vessel will wallow, broadside to, in very bad shape indeed. But it is unlikely. A modern warship, functioning properly and handled with wisdom, can probably ride out any typhoon.
The storm’s best recourse in the contest for the ship’s life is old-fashioned bogeyman terror. It makes ghastly noises and horrible faces and shakes up the captain to distract him from doing the sensible thing in tight moments. If the wind can toss the ship sideways long enough it can probably damage the engines or kill them—and then it wins. Because above all the ship must be kept steaming under control. It suffers under one disadvantage as a drifting hulk, compared to the old wooden sailing ship: iron doesn’t float. A destroyer deprived of its engines in a typhoon is almost certain to capsize, or else fill up and sink.
When things get really bad, the books say, the best idea is to turn the ship’s head into the wind and sea and ride out the blow that way. But even on this the authorities are not all agreed. None of the authorities have experienced the worst of enough typhoons to make airtight generalizations. None of the authorities, moreover, are anxious to acquire the experience.
The TBS message was so muffled by static and the noise of wind and waves that Willie had to put his ear to the loudspeaker: Chain Gang from Sunshine. Discontinue fueling. Execute to follow. New fleet course 180. Small Boys reorientate screen.
“What? What was it?” said Queeg at Willie’s elbow.
“Discontinuing fueling, sir, and turning south. Execute to follow.”
“Getting the hell out, hey? About time.”
Maryk, squat and enormous in his life jacket, said, “I don’t know how she’ll ride, sir, with her stern to the wind. Quartering seas always murder us—”
“Any course that takes us out of here is the right course,” said Queeg. He peered out at the ragged waves, rearing and tossing everywhere as high as the ship’s mast. The flying spray was like a cloudburst. A few hundred yards beyond the ship the gray mountains of water faded into a white misty wall. The spray was beginning to rattle against the windows, sounding more like hail than water. “Kay, Willie. Call Paynter and tell him to stand by his engines for some fast action. Steve, I’m going to conn from the radar shack. You stay here.”
The TBS scratched and whined. The voice came through gurgling, as though the loudspeaker were under water: “Small Boys from Sunshine. Execute reorientation. Make best speed.”
“Kay. All engines ahead full. Right standard rudder. Steady on 180,” said Queeg, and ran out of the wheelhouse. The Caine went plunging downhill into a foaming trough. Stilwell spun the helm, saying, “Christ, this wheel feels loose.”
“Rudder’s probably clear out of the water,” Maryk said. The nose of the ship cut into the sea and came up slowly, shedding thick solid streams. The wheelhouse trembled.
“Rudder is right standard, sir,” said Stilwell. “Jesus, she’s getting shoved around fast. Heading 010, sir—020—” Like a kite taking the wind, the minesweeper heeled, and swept sharply to the right. Fear tingled in Willie’s arms and legs as he was swung against the wet windows. “Heading 035, sir—040—”
Hanging increasingly to starboard, the Caine was rising and falling on the waves, blown sidewise, riding more like flotsam again than a ship under control. Spray blew across the forecastle in clouds. Instinctively Willie looked to Maryk, and was deeply relieved to see the exec hanging with both arms to an overhead beam, his back planted against the bulkhead, calmly watching the swift veer of the forecastle across the water.
“Say, Willie!” The captain’s voice was angry and shrill through the speaking tube. “Get your goddamn radio technician up here, will you? I can’t see anything on this goddamn radar.”
Willie roared, “Aye aye, sir,” into the speaking tube and passed a call for the technician over the p.a. He was beginning to feel nauseous from the dizzy sidewise slipping of the Caine and the queer rise and fall of the slanted deck.
“Mr. Maryk,” the helmsman said in a changed tone, “she’s stopped coming around—”
“What’s your head?”
“Zero nine three.”
“We’re broadside to. Wind’s got her. She’ll come slow.”
“Still 093, sir,” said Stilwell, after a minute of bad wallowing—heavy slow rolls upright and swift sickening drops to starboard. It was hard to tell whether the Caine was moving through the water at all, or simply being flung sidewise and forward. The sense of motion came entirely from the sea and the wind; yet the engines were making twenty knots.
“Bring your rudder hard right,” said Maryk.
“Hard right, sir—Christ, sir, this goddamn wheel feels like the wheel ropes are broken! Just sloppy—” The hair of Willie’s head prickled to see the looks of fright on the sailors. He felt the same expression forming on his own face.
“Shut your yap, Stilwell, the wheel ropes are okay,” said Maryk. “Don’t be such a baby. Haven’t you ever had the wheel in a sea before—”
“Now God damn it, Steve,” came the squeak of Queeg, “what the hell’s going on out there? Why aren’t we coming around?”
Maryk yelled into the speaking tube, “Wind and sea taking charge, sir. I’ve got the rudder at hard right—”
“Well, use the engines. Get her around. Christ on a crutch, do I have to do everything here? Where’s that technician? There’s nothing but grass on this radar—”
Maryk began to manipulate the engines. A combination of standard speed on the port screw and slow backing on the starboard started swinging the ship’s head slowly to the south. “Steady on 180, sir,” Stilwell said at last, turning his face to Maryk, his eyes glinting with relief.
The ship was tossing and heeling from side to side. But there was no alarm in the steepest rolls any more, so long as they were even dips both ways. Willie was getting used to the sight of the three rusty stacks lying apparently parallel to the sea, so that between them he saw nothing but foaming water. The whipping of the stacks back and forth like gigantic windshield wipers was no longer a frightening but a pleasant thing. It was the slow, slow dangling rolls to one side that he dreaded.
Queeg came in, mopping at his eyes with a handkerchief. “Damn spray stings. Well, you finally got her around, hey? Guess we’re okay now.”
“Are we on station, sir?”
“Well, pretty near, I guess. I can’t tell. Technician says the spray is giving us this sea return that’s fogging up the scope. I guess if we’re too far out of line Sunshine will give us a growl—”
“Sir, I think maybe we ought to ballast,” said the exec. “We’re pretty light, sir. Thirty-five per cent on fuel. One reason we don’t come around good is that we’re riding so high—”
“Well, don’t worry, we’re not capsizing yet.”
“It’ll just give us that much more maneuverability, sir—”
“Yes, and contaminate our tanks with a lot of salt water, so we lose suction every fifteen minutes once we refuel. Sunshine has our fuel report. If he thought there was any danger he’d issue ballasting orders.”
“I also think we ought to set the depth charges on safe, sir.”
“What’s the matter, Steve, are you panicky on account of a little bad weather?”
“I’m not panicky, sir—”
“We’re still supposed to be an anti-submarine vessel, you know. What the hell good are depth charges set on safe if we pick up a sub in the next five minutes?”
Maryk glanced out of the blurred window at the colossal boiling waves. “Sir, we won’t be making any sub runs in this—”
“How do we know?”
“Sir, the Dietch in our squadron got caught in a storm in the Aleutians, and got sunk by its own depth charges tearing loose. Blew off the stern. Skipper got a general court—”
“Hell’s bells, if your heart is so set on putting the depth charges on safe go ahead. I don’t care. Just be damn sure there’s somebody standing by to arm them if we pick up a sub—”
“Mr. Maryk,” spoke up Stilwell, “the depth charges are on safe, sir.”
“They are!” exclaimed Queeg. “Who says so?”
“I—I set ’em myself, sir.” The sailor’s voice was shaky. He stood with legs spread, clutching the wheel, his eyes on the gyrocompass.
“And who told you to do that?”
“I got standing orders, sir, from Mr. Keefer. When the ship is in danger I set ’em on safe—”
“And who said the ship was in danger, hey?” Queeg swung back and forth, clinging to a window handle, glaring at the helmsman’s back.
“Well, sir, on that big roll around seven o’clock, I—I set ’em. The whole fantail was awash. Had to rig a life line—”
“God damn it, Mr. Maryk, why am I never informed of these things? Here I am, steaming around with a lot of dead depth charges—”
Stilwell said, “Sir, I told Mr. Keefer—”
“You speak when you’re spoken to, you goddamned imbecile, and not otherwise!” shrieked Queeg. “Mr. Keith, place this man on report for insolence and neglect of duty! He told Mr. Keefer! I’ll attend to Mr. Keefer! Now Steve, I want you to get another helmsman and keep this stupid idiot’s ugly face out of my sight from now on—”
“Captain, pardon me,” said the exec hurriedly, “the other helmsmen are still shot from last night. Stilwell’s our best man and we need him—”
“Will you stop this back talk?” screamed the captain. “Great bloody Christ, is there one officer on this ship who takes orders from me? I said I want—”
Engstrand stumbled into the wallowing wheelhouse and grabbed at Willie to keep from falling. His dungarees ran with water. “Sorry, Mr. Keith. Captain, the barometer—”
“What about the barometer?”
“Twenty-eight ninety-four, sir—twenty-eight—”
“Who the hell’s been watching the barometer? Why haven’t I had a report for a half hour?” Queeg ran out on the wing, steadying himself from hand to hand on the windows, the engine-room telegraph, the doorway.
“Mr. Maryk,” the helmsman said hoarsely, “I can’t hold her on 180. She’s falling off to port—”
“Give her more rudder—”
“I got her at emergency right, sir—heading 172, sir—falling off fast—”
“Why is the rudder emergency right?” Queeg bellowed, lurching in through the doorway. “Who’s giving rudder orders here? Is everybody on this bridge going crazy?”
“Captain, she’s yawing to port,” said Maryk. “Steersman can’t hold her at 180—”
“One six zero, sir, now,” said Stilwell, with a scared look at Maryk. It was the dreaded weather-vane effect, taking charge of the Caine. The rudder was not holding, and the ship was skidding sideways at the pleasure of wind and waves. The head was dropping off from south to east.
Queeg grabbed at the helmsman and steadied himself to stare at the compass. He jumped to the telegraph and signaled “Flank Speed” with one handle and “Stop” with the other. The engine-room pointers answered instantly. The deck began to vibrate with the one-sided strain on the engines. “That’ll bring her around,” said the captain. “What’s your head now?”
“Still falling off, sir, 152—148—”
Queeg muttered, “Needs a few seconds to take hold—”
Once again the Caine took a sickening cant to starboard and hung there. Waves coming from the port side broke over the ship as though it were a floating log. It wallowed feebly under the tons of water, but did not right itself. It came halfway back to level and sagged further to starboard again. Willie’s face was pushed against the window and he saw water no more than inches from his eyes. He could have counted little bubbles of foam. Stilwell, hanging to the wheel, with his feet sliding out from under him, stammered, “Still falling off, sir—heading 125—”
“Captain, we’re broaching to,” said Maryk, his voice lacking firmness for the first time. “Try backing the starboard engine, sir.” The captain seemed not to hear. “Sir, sir, back the starboard engine.”
Queeg, clinging to the telegraph with his knees and arms, threw him a frightened glance, his skin greenish, and obediently slid the handle backward. The laboring ship shuddered fearfully; it continued to drift sidewise before the wind, rising and falling on each swell a distance equal to the height of a tall building. “What’s your head?” The captain’s voice was a muffled croak.
“Steady on 117, sir—”
“Think she’ll grab, Steve?” murmured Willie.
“I hope so.”
“Oh holy Mother of Christ, make this ship come around!” spoke a queer wailing voice. The tone made Willie shiver. Urban, the little signalman, had dropped to his knees and was hugging the binnacle, his eyes closed, his head thrown back.
“Shut up, Urban,” Maryk said sharply. “Get on your feet—”
Stilwell exclaimed, “Sir, heading 120! Coming right, sir!”
“Good,” said Maryk. “Ease your rudder to standard.”
Without so much as a glance at the captain, Stilwell obeyed. Willie noticed the omission, for all that he was terror-stricken; and he noticed, too, that Queeg, frozen to the telegraph stand, seemed oblivious.
“Rudder is eased to standard, sir—heading 124, sir—” The Caine stood erect slowly and wabbled a little to port before heeling deep to starboard again.
“We’re okay,” said Maryk. Urban got off his knees and looked around sheepishly.
“Heading 128—129—130—”
“Willie,” said the exec, “take a look in the radar shack. See if you can tell where the hell we are in the formation.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie staggered out past the captain to the open wing. The wind immediately smashed him against the bridgehouse, and spray pelted him like small wet stones. He was astounded and peculiarly exhilarated to realize that in the last fifteen minutes the wind had actually become much stronger than before, and would blow him over the side if he exposed himself in a clear space. He laughed aloud, his voice thin against the guttural “Whooeeee!” of the storm. He inched himself to the door of the radar shack, freed the dogs, and tried to pull the door open, but the wind held it tightly shut. He pounded on the wet steel with his knuckles, and kicked at it, and screamed, “Open up! Open up! It’s the OOD!” A crack appeared and widened. He darted through, knocking down one of the radarmen who was pushing against the door. It snapped shut as though on a spring.
“What the hell!” exclaimed Willie.
There were perhaps twenty sailors jammed in the tiny space, all in life jackets with waterproof searchlights pinned to them, all with whistles dangling around their necks, all with the same round-eyed bristly white face of fear. “How are we doing, Mr. Keith?” spoke the voice of Meatball from the rear of the crush.
“We’re doing fine—”
“We gonna have to abandon ship, sir?” said a filthy-faced fireman.
Willie suddenly realized what was so very strange about the shack beside the crowd. It was brightly lit. Nobody was paying any attention to the dim green slopes of the radars. He let loose a stream of obscenity that surprised him as it came out of his mouth. The sailors shrank a little from him. “Who turned on the lights in here? Who’s got the watch?”
“Sir, there’s nothing on the scopes but sea return,” whined a radarman.
Willie cursed some more, and then said, “Douse the lights. Get your faces against these scopes and keep them there.”
“Okay, Mr. Keith,” said the radarman, in a friendly, respectful tone, “but it won’t do no good.” In the gloom Willie quickly saw that the sailor was right. There was no trace of the pips of the other ships, nothing but a blurry peppering and streaking of green all over the scopes. “You see, sir,” said the voice of the technician, patiently, “our masthead ain’t no higher than the water most of the time, and anyway, all this spray, why, it’s like a solid object, sir. These scopes are jammed out—”
“All the same,” said Willie, “the watch will be maintained on these radars, and you’ll keep trying till you do get something! And all the guys who don’t belong in here—well—well, stay here, and keep your faces closed so the watch-standers can do their duty—”
“Sir, are we really okay?”
“Will we have to abandon ship?”
“I was ready to jump on that last roll—”
“Will the ship come through it, Mr. Keith?”
“We’re okay,” shouted Willie. “We’re okay. Don’t lose your heads. We’ll be back chipping paint in a few hours—”
“I’ll chip this rusty old bitch till doomsday if she just rides out this blow,” said a voice, and there was a ripple of small laughs.
“I’m staying up here if I get a court-martial for it—”
“Me, too—”
“Hell, there are forty guys over on the lee of the bridge—”
“Mister Keith”—the gutter twang of Meatball again—“honest, does the old man know what the Christ he’s doing? That’s all we want to know.”
“The old man’s doing great. You bastards shut up and take it easy. Couple of you help me get this door open.”
Wind and spray blasted in through the open crack. Willie pulled himself out and the door clanged. The wind blew him forward into the pilothouse. In the second that elapsed he was drenched as by buckets of water. “Radars are jammed, Steve. Nothing to see until this spray moderates—”
“Very well.”
Despite the whining and crashing of the storm, Willie got the impression of silence in the wheelhouse. Queeg hung to the telegraph as before. Stilwell swayed at the wheel. Urban, wedged between the binnacle and the front window, clutched the quartermaster’s log as though it were a Bible. Usually there were other sailors in the wheelhouse—telephone talkers, signalmen—but they were avoiding it now as though it were the sickroom of a cancer victim. Maryk stood with both hands clamped to the captain’s chair. Willie staggered to the starboard side and glanced out at the wing. A crowd of sailors and officers pressed against the bridgehouse, hanging to each other, their clothes whipping in the wind. Willie saw Keefer, Jorgensen, and nearest him, Harding.
“Willie, are we going to be okay?” Harding said.
The OOD nodded, and fell back into the wheelhouse. He was vexed at not having a flashlight and whistle, like everyone else. “Just my luck to be on watch,” he thought. He did not really believe yet that the ship was going to founder, but he resented being at a disadvantage. His own man-overboard gear was in his desk below. He thought of sending the boatswain’s mate for it; and was ashamed to issue the order.
The Caine yawed shakily back and forth on heading 180 for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly it was flung almost on its beam-ends to port by a swell, a wave and a gust of wind hitting together. Willie reeled, brought up against Stilwell, and grabbed at the wheel spokes.
“Captain,” Maryk said, “I still think we ought to ballast—at least the stern tanks, if we’re going to steam before the wind.”
Willie glanced at Queeg. The captain’s face was screwed up as though he were looking at a bright light. He gave no sign of having heard. “I request permission to ballast stern tanks, sir,” said the exec.
Queeg’s lips moved. “Negative,” he said calmly and faintly.
Stilwell twisted the wheel sharply, pulling the spokes out of Willie’s hands. The OOD grasped an overhead beam.
“Falling off to starboard now. Heading 189—190—191—”
Maryk said, “Captain—hard left rudder?”
“Okay,” murmured Queeg.
“Hard left rudder, sir,” said Stilwell. “Heading 200—”
The exec stared at the captain for several seconds while the minesweeper careened heavily to port and began its nauseating sideslipping over the swells, the wind flipping it around now in the other direction. “Captain, we’ll have to use engines again, she’s not answering to the rudder…. Sir, how about heading up into the wind? She’s going to keep broaching to with this stern wind—”
Queeg pushed the handles of the telegraph. “Fleet course is 180,” he said.
“Sir, we have to maneuver for the safety of the ship—”
“Sunshine knows the weather conditions. We’ve received no orders to maneuver at discretion—” Queeg looked straight ahead, constantly clutching the telegraph amid the gyrations of the wheelhouse.
“Heading 225—falling away fast, sir—”
An unbelievably big gray wave loomed on the port side, high over the bridge. It came smashing down. Water spouted into the wheelhouse from the open wing, flooding to Willie’s knees. The water felt surprisingly warm and sticky, like blood. “Sir, we’re shipping water on the goddamn bridge!” said Maryk shrilly. “We’ve got to come around into the wind!”
“Heading 245, sir.” Stilwell’s voice was sobbing. “She ain’t answering to the engines at all, sir!”
The Caine rolled almost completely over on its port side. Everybody in the wheelhouse except Stilwell went sliding across the streaming deck and piled up against the windows. The sea was under their noses, dashing up against the glass. “Mr. Maryk, the light on this gyro just went out!” screamed Stilwell, clinging desperately to the wheel. The wind howled and shrieked in Willie’s ears. He lay on his face on the deck, tumbling around in salt water, flailing for a grip at something solid.
“Oh Christ, Christ, Christ, Jesus Christ, save us!” squealed the voice of Urban.
“Reverse your rudder, Stilwell! Hard right! Hard right!” cried the exec harshly.
“Hard right, sir!”
Maryk crawled across the deck, threw himself on the engine-room telegraph, wrested the handles from Queeg’s spasmodic grip, and reversed the settings. “Excuse me, Captain—” A horrible coughing rumble came from the stacks. “What’s your head?” barked Maryk.
“Two seven five, sir!”
“Hold her at hard right!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
The old minesweeper rolled up a little from the surface of the water.
Willie Keith did not have any idea of what the executive officer was doing, though the maneuver was simple enough. The wind was turning the ship from south to west. Queeg had been trying to fight back to south. Maryk was doing just the opposite, now; seizing on the momentum of the twist to the right and assisting it with all the force of engines and rudder, to try to swing the ship’s head completely northward, into the wind and sea. In a calmer moment Willie would easily have understood the logic of the act, but now he had lost his bearings. He sat on the deck, hanging stupidly to a telephone jack-box, with water sloshing around his crotch, and looked to the exec as to a wizard, or an angel of God, to save him with magic passes. He had lost faith in the ship. He was overwhelmingly aware that he sat on a piece of iron in an angry dangerous sea. He could think of nothing but his yearning to be saved. Typhoon, Caine, Queeg, sea, Navy, duty, lieutenant’s bars, all were forgotten. He was like a wet cat mewing on wreckage.
“Still coming around? What’s your head? Keep calling your head!” yelled Maryk.
“Coming around hard, sir!” the helmsman screamed as though prodded with a knife. “Heading 310, heading 315, heading 320—”
“Ease your rudder to standard!”
“Ease the rudder, sir?”
“Yes, ease her, ease her!”
“Ru-rudder is eased, sir—”
“Very well.”
Ease, ease ease—the word penetrated Willie’s numb fogged mind. He pulled himself to his feet, and looked around. The Caine was riding upright. It rolled to one side, to the other, and back again. Outside the windows there was nothing but solid white spray. The sea was invisible. The forecastle was invisible. “You okay, Willie? I thought you were knocked cold.” Maryk, braced on the captain’s chair, gave him a brief side glance.
“I’m okay. Wha-what’s happening, Steve?”
“Well, this is it. We ride it out for a half hour, we’re okay—What’s your head?” he called to Stilwell.
“Three two five, sir—coming around slower, now—”
“Well, sure, fighting the wind—she’ll come around—we’ll steady on 000—”
“Aye aye, sir—”
“We will not,” said Queeg.
Willie had lost all awareness of the captain’s presence. Maryk had filled his mind as father, leader, and savior. He looked now at the little pale man who stood with arms and legs entwined around the telegraph stand, and had the feeling that Queeg was a stranger. The captain, blinking and shaking his head as though he had just awakened, said, “Come left to 180.”
“Sir, we can’t ride stern to wind and save this ship,” said the exec.
“Left to 180, helmsman.”
“Hold it, Stilwell,” said Maryk.
“Mr. Maryk, fleet course is 180.” The captain’s voice was faint, almost whispering. He was looking glassily ahead.
“Captain, we’ve lost contact with the formation—the radars are blacked out—”
“Well, then, we’ll find them—I’m not disobeying orders on account of some bad weather—”
The helmsman said, “Steady on 000—”
Maryk said, “Sir, how do we know what the orders are now? The guide’s antennas may be down—ours may be—call up Sunshine and tell him we’re in trouble—”
Butting and plunging, the Caine was a riding ship again. Willie felt the normal vibration of the engines, the rhythm of seaworthiness in the pitching, coming up from the deck into the bones of his feet. Outside the pilothouse there was only the whitish darkness of the spray and the dismal whine of the wind, going up and down in shivery glissandos.
“We’re not in trouble,” said Queeg. “Come left to 180.”
“Steady as you go!” Maryk said at the same instant. The helmsman looked around from one officer to the other, his eyes popping in panic. “Do as I say!” shouted the executive officer. He turned on the OOD. “Willie, note the time.” He strode to the captain’s side and saluted. “Captain, I’m sorry, sir, you’re a sick man. I am temporarily relieving you of this ship, under Article 184 of Navy Regulations.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Queeg. “Left to 180, helmsman.”
“Mr. Keith, you’re the OOD here, what the hell should I do?” cried Stilwell.
Willie was looking at the clock. It was fifteen minutes to ten. He was dumfounded to think he had had the deck less than two hours. The import of what was taking place between Maryk and Queeg penetrated his mind slowly. He could not believe it was happening. It was as incredible as his own death.
“Never you mind about Mr. Keith,” said Queeg to Stilwell, a slight crankiness entering his voice, fantastically incongruous under the circumstances. It was a tone he might have used to complain of a chewing-gum wrapper on the deck. “I told you to come left. That’s an order. Now you come left, and fast—”
“Commander Queeg, you aren’t issuing orders on this bridge any more,” said Maryk. “I have relieved you, sir. You’re on the sick list. I’m taking the responsibility. I know I’ll be court-martialed. I’ve got the conn—”
“You’re under arrest, Maryk. Get below to your room,” said Queeg. “Left to 180, I say!”
“Christ, Mr. Keith!” exclaimed the helmsman, looking at Willie. Urban had backed into the farthest corner of the wheelhouse. He stared from the exec to Willie, his mouth open. Willie glanced at Queeg, glued to the telegraph, and at Maryk. He felt a surge of immense drunken gladness.
“Steady on 000, Stilwell,” he said. “Mr. Maryk has the responsibility. Captain Queeg is sick.”
“Call your relief, Mr. Keith,” the captain said at the same instant, with something like real anger. “You’re under arrest, too.”
“You have no power to arrest me, Mr. Queeg,” said Willie.
The shocking change of name caused a look of happy surprise to appear on Stilwell’s face. He grinned at Queeg with contempt. “Steady on 000, Mr. Maryk,” he said, and turned his back to the officers.
Queeg suddenly quit his grasp on the telegraph stand, and stumbled across the heaving wheelhouse to the starboard side. “Mr. Keefer! Mr. Harding! Aren’t there any officers out there?” he called to the wing.
“Willie, phone Paynter and tell him to ballast all empty tanks on the double,” Maryk said.
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie seized the telephone and buzzed the fireroom. “Hello, Paynt? Listen, we’re going to ballast. Flood all your empty tanks on the double—You’re goddamn right it’s about time—”
“Mr. Keith, I did not issue any orders to ballast,” said Queeg. “You call that fireroom right back—”
Maryk stepped to the public-address system. “Now, all officers, report to the bridge. All officers, report to the bridge.” He said aside to Willie, “Call Paynter and tell him that word doesn’t apply to him.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie pulled the phone from the bracket.
“I said once and I say again,” Queeg exclaimed querulously, “both of you are under arrest! Leave the bridge, right now. Your conduct is disgraceful!”
Queeg’s protests gave Willie a growing sense of gladness and power. In this shadowy careening wet wheelhouse, in this twilit darkness of midmorning, with a murderous wind shrieking at the windows, he seemed to be living the happiest moment of his life. All fear had left him.
Maryk said, “Willie, think you can grab a look at the barometer without being blown over the side?”
“Sure, Steve.” He went out on the port wing, clinging carefully to the bridge structure. As he crept up to the charthouse door it came open, and Harding, Keefer, and Jorgensen emerged, clasping each other’s hands. “What’s the dope, Willie? What goes on?” yelled Keefer.
“Steve relieved the captain!”
“What?”
“Steve relieved the captain! He’s got the conn! He’s put the captain on the sick list!” The officers looked at each other and lunged for the wheelhouse. Willie edged to the rear bulkhead and peered around at the blurry barometer. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled back to the pilothouse. “Steve, it’s up,” he cried, jumping to his feet as he came to the doorway. “It’s up! Twenty-eight ninety-nine, almost 29.00!”
“Good, maybe we’ll be through the worst of it in a while.” Maryk stood beside the wheel, facing aft. All the officers except Paynter were grouped, dripping, against the bulkhead. Queeg was hanging to the telegraph again, glaring at the exec. “Well, that’s the story, gentlemen,” Maryk said, his voice pitched high over the roar of the wind and the rattle of spray on the windows. “The responsibility is entirely mine. Captain Queeg will continue to be treated with the utmost courtesy, but I will give all command orders—”
“Don’t kid yourself that the responsibility is all yours,” Queeg interposed sulkily. “Young Mr. Keith here supported you in your mutinous conduct from the start and he’ll pay just as you will. And you officers”—he turned, shaking his finger at them—“if you know what’s good for you, will advise Maryk and Keith to put themselves under arrest and restore command to me while the restoring is good. I may be induced to overlook what’s happened in view of the circumstances, but—”
“It’s out of the question, Captain,” said Maryk. “You’re sick, sir—”
“I’m no sicker than you are,” exclaimed Queeg with all his old irritation. “You’ll all hang for collusion in mutiny, I kid you not about that—”
“Nobody will hang but me,” said Maryk to the officers. “This is my act, taken without anybody’s advice, under Article 184, and if I’ve misapplied Article 184, I’ll get hung for it. Meantime all of you take my orders. There’s nothing else you can do. I’ve taken command, I’ve ballasted on my own responsibility, the ship is on the course I ordered—”
“Mr. Maryk!” Stilwell shouted. “Something up ahead, a ship or something, close aboard, sir!”
Maryk whirled, squinted out through the windows, and grabbed at the telegraph handles, hurling Queeg roughly aside. The captain staggered and grasped a window handle. “Hard right rudder!” the exec shouted, ringing up full astern on both engines.
Visibility had improved so that the sea was in sight through the driving spray some fifty yards beyond the bows. A vast dim red shape bobbed on the black swells, slightly to port.
The Caine veered quickly, shoved sideways by the wind as soon as it turned a little. The thing drifted closer. It was immense, long and narrow, longer than the Caine itself, bright red. Waves were breaking over it in showers of foam.
“Holy Mother of God,” said Keefer. “It’s the bottom of a ship.”
Everybody stared in awe at the horror. It slipped slowly down the port side, endlessly long and red, rolling gently under the breaking waves. “Destroyer,” Harding said in a choked voice.
The Caine was moving well clear of it. Part of the wreck was already gone in the gloom. “We’ll circle,” said Maryk. “All engines ahead full, Willie.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The OOD rang up the order. There was a hideous sickness at the pit of his stomach.
Maryk went to the p.a. box and pressed the lever. “Now all hands topside keep a sharp lookout for survivors. We will circle the capsized ship twice. Report anything you see to the bridge. Don’t get excited. Don’t anybody get blown overboard, we have enough trouble as it is.”
Queeg, braced in a forward corner against the windows, said, “If you’re so worried about the safety of this ship, how can you go monkeying around looking for survivors?”
“Sir, we can’t just steam by and forget it—” said the exec.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I think we should look for survivors. In fact I order you to do so. I’m simply pointing out your inconsistency for the record—”
“Left standard rudder,” said Maryk.
“I should also like to point out,” said Queeg, “that twenty minutes before you illegally relieved me I ordered you to get rid of that helmsman and you disobeyed me. He’s the worst troublemaker on the ship. When he obeyed you instead of me he became a party to this mutiny, and he’ll hang if it’s—”
A roaring wave broke over the Caine’s bridge and buffeted the ship far over to port, and Queeg tumbled to his hands and knees. The other officers slid and tottered about, clutching at each other. Once again the minesweeper labored in difficulties as the wind caught it and swept it sideways. Maryk went to the telegraph stand and manipulated the engines, altering the settings frequently, and shouting swift-changing rudder orders. He coaxed the ship around to the south, and steamed ahead until the hulk came vaguely in view again. Then he commenced a careful circling maneuver, keeping the Caine well clear of the foundering wreck. It was entirely awash now; only when a deep trough rode under it did the round red bottom break to the surface. The officers muttered among themselves. Queeg, his arm around the compass stand, stared out of the window.
It took forty minutes for the Caine to maneuver through a full circle around the lost ship against wind and waves, and all the time it wallowed and thrashed as badly as it had been doing since morning, and took several terrible rolls to leeward. Willie was scared each time. But he now knew the difference between honest fright and animal terror. One was bearable, human, not incapacitating; the other was moral castration. He was no longer terrorized, and felt he no longer could be, even if the ship went down, provided Maryk were in the water near him.
The exec was out on the wing, shielding his eyes from the hurtling spray with both hands, peering around at the heaving spires of black water, as the Caine steadied on north again. He came into the wheelhouse, trailing streams from his clothes. “We’ll come around once more and then quit,” he said. “I think it’s gone under. I can’t see it—Left standard rudder.”
Willie groped to the barometer once more and saw that it had risen to 29.10. He crawled to Maryk’s side and reported the reading, yelling into the exec’s ear. Maryk nodded. Willie rubbed his hands over his face, fevered with the sting of the flailing spray. “Why the hell doesn’t it let up, Steve, if the barometer’s rising?”
“Oh, Jesus, Willie, we’re thirty miles from a typhoon center. Anything can happen in here.” The exec grinned into the wind, baring his teeth. “We may still catch all kinds of hell—Rudder amidships!” he shouted through the doorway.
“Rudder amidships, sir!”
“Getting tired, Stilwell?”
“No, sir. Wrestle with this son of a bitch all day if you want me to, sir!”
“Very good.”
The door of the radar shack pushed open, and the telephone talker, Grubnecker, poked out his whiskered face. “Something that looks like a raft on the starboard quarter, sir, Bellison reports.”
Maryk, followed by Willie, went trampling through the wheelhouse to the other side of the bridge, shouting at Stilwell as he passed, “Hard right rudder!”
At first they saw nothing but peaks and troughs of water veiled by spray; then, broad on the beam, as the Caine rose to the top of a swell, they both spied a black dot sliding down the slant of a wave.
“I think there’s three guys on it!” shrieked Willie. He danced aft to the flagbag rails for a better look. A stiff gust of wind sent him sprawling on his stomach on the canvas cover of the flagbag. As he gasped and clutched wildly at the halyards to keep from rolling over the side, swallowing salt water from the puddle on the canvas, the wind stripped his trousers clean off his legs, and they went flapping away over the bulwark into the sea. He pulled himself to his feet, paying no attention at all to the loss.
Queeg stood in the doorway, face to face with the executive officer. “Well, Mr. Maryk, what are you waiting for? How about rigging your cargo net to starboard and having your deck force stand by with life buoys?”
“Thank you, sir. I was about to give those orders, if you’ll let me pass.”
Queeg stepped aside. The exec went into the pilothouse, and passed the instructions over the loudspeaker. He began to maneuver the lurching ship toward the object, which soon showed clear, a gray balsam raft, with three men on it and two more heads bobbing beside it in the water.
“You’ll be interested to know, gentlemen,” Queeg said to the officers while Maryk manipulated engines and rudder, “that I was about to issue orders to ballast and head into the wind when Mr. Maryk committed his panic-stricken criminal act. I had previously determined in my own mind that if the fleet guide had given no orders by 1000 I would act at my own discretion—”
Maryk said, “All right, Stilwell, head over to the right some more. Hard right—”
Queeg went on, “And I saw no reason for confiding my command decisions to Mr. Maryk, who seemed to be treating me like a feeble-minded idiot, and I’ll say as much over the green table, and there’ll be plenty of witnesses to—”
“Don’t run ’em down, Stilwell! Rudder amidships!” Maryk stopped the engines and went to the loudspeaker. “Now throw over your buoys!”
The survivors were pulled aboard. A white-faced, wild-eyed sailor, naked except for white drawers, streaked with broad smears of oil, with a bleeding gash in his cheek, was brought to the bridge by Bellison. The chief said, “It was the George Black, sir. This here is Morton, quartermaster third. The others are down in sick bay.”
Morton stammered a brief, horrid tale. The George Black had been thrown broadside to the wind and all combinations of engines and rudder had failed to bring it around. Ventilators, ammunition boxes, and davits were ripped off the decks by the seas; water began flooding the engine rooms; power failed; the lights went out. The helpless ship drifted for ten minutes, rolling further and further to starboard, with all hands screaming or praying, and finally took a tremendous roll to starboard and never stopped rolling. His next recollection was being under water in complete blackness, and after that he was at the surface, being dashed against the red bottom of his ship.
“We’ll keep circling,” said Maryk. He peered out at the streaked sea, visible now for several hundred yards. “I think it’s letting up some. Take him below, Bellison.”
“I am resuming the conn, Mr. Maryk,” said Queeg, “and we will drop the matter entirely until the storm has abated—”
Maryk turned wearily to the captain. “No, sir. I’ve got it. I respectfully ask you to lay below to your cabin. Contradictory orders will endanger the ship—”
“Are you putting me off my bridge, sir?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Queeg looked to the officers. Their faces were scared and somber. “Do all you gentlemen concur in this act?… Do you, Mr. Keefer?”
The novelist gnawed at his lips, and turned his glance to Maryk. “Nobody is concurring. Nobody has to concur,” the exec said quickly. “Please leave the bridge, Captain, or at least refrain from giving orders—”
“I shall remain on the bridge,” said Queeg. “The ship is still my responsibility. Mutiny doesn’t relieve me of it. I shall not speak unless your acts appear to me to be endangering my ship. In that case I shall speak even at pistol point—”
“Nobody’s pulling pistols on you, sir. What you say suits me.” The exec nodded to the officers. “Okay, no need for you to hang around. We’ll have a meeting as soon as weather permits.”
The officers began straggling out of the wheelhouse. Keefer went up to Willie, saluted, and said with a pallid grin, “I am ready to relieve you, sir.”
Willie looked at the clock in astonishment. Time had stopped running in his mind. It was a quarter to twelve. “Okay,” he said. The formulas of the relieving ceremony came mechanically to his lips. “Steaming on various courses and speeds to look for survivors of the George Black. Steaming on boilers one, two, and three. Depth charges set on safe. Condition Able set throughout the ship. Last time I saw the barometer it had risen to 29.10. Fleet course is 180, but we’ve lost contact with formation due to jammed radars, and I don’t know where we are. About one hundred and fifty miles east of Ulithi, I’d say. You can check our 0800 dead reckoning position. We’re in the same place, more or less. The captain has been relieved under Article 184, and is still on the bridge. The executive officer has command and is at the conn. I guess that’s all.”
“Just a routine watch,” said Keefer. Willie smiled ruefully.
Keefer saluted. “Okay, I’ve got it.” He grasped Willie’s hand, pressed it warmly, and whispered, “Good work.”
“God help us all,” murmured Willie.