Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [126]
“Yes, sir.”
With a friendly smile, Queeg said, “Well, I’m off.”
“I’ll walk you down, sir.”
“Why, thank you, Steve. That’ll be very pleasant.”
In the days that followed the Caine was hastily put back together by the yard workmen, none of its parts much the better for the disassembly; and the general hope, as in the case of a clock taken apart by a child, was not that it would perform in an improved manner, but rather that it might begin ticking again as well as before. Some of the worst decay in the engineering plant was patched and the ship had new radars. Otherwise it was the same mangy old Caine. Nobody knew why the overhaul time had been cut in half, but Keefer was vocal on the point, as usual. “Someone finally figured out that the bucket won’t hold together for more than one invasion, anyway,” he theorized. “So they just souped her up enough for one last gasp.”
On the thirtieth of December, the Caine steamed out through the Golden Gate at sunset, minus some twenty-five of her crew, who had elected court-martial for missing ship rather than another cruise with Queeg. Willie Keith was on the bridge, and his spirits were low as the last hills slipped past the bow, and the ship issued forth on the purple sea. He knew this meant a long, long parting from May. There would be hundreds of thousands of miles of steaming, and probably many battles, before the ship would come into these waters again with its bow pointed the other way. The sun, dead ahead, sinking beneath ragged banks of dark clouds, shot out great spokes of red light which fanned across the western sky. It was an uncomfortable similitude of the flag of Japan.
But he had a good steak dinner in the wardroom, and he wasn’t posted for a night watch. And what cheered him most of all was that he went to sleep in a room, not the clipping shack. He had inherited Carmody’s bunk, and Paynter was his new roommate.
With a sense of great luxury and well-being, Willie crawled to the narrow upper bunk and slid between the fresh, rough Navy sheets. He lay only a few inches beneath the plates of the main deck. He had not much more room than he would have had under the lid of a coffin. A knotty valve of the fire main projected downward into his stomach. The stateroom was not as large as the dressing closet in his Manhasset home. But what did all that matter? From the clipping shack to this bunk was a great rise in the world. Willie closed his eyes, listened with pleasure to the hum of the ventilators, and felt in his bones the vibration of the main engines, transmitted through the springs of his bunk. The ship was alive again. He felt warm, and safe, and at home. Drowsiness came over him almost at once, and he slept deliciously.
PART FIVE
THE MUTINY
CHAPTER 19
The Circle of Compliance
Any recent book of military history is likely to contain the remark that by the beginning of 1944 World War II was really won. Quite rightly, too. The great turning points, Guadalcanal, El Alamein, Midway, and Stalingrad, were in the past. Italy had surrendered. The murdering Germans were at last recoiling. The Japanese, their meager power spread thin over a swollen empire, had begun to crack. The industrial power of the Allies was coming to flood; that of their enemies was waning. It was a bright picture.
But Ensign Keith had a worm’s-eye view of the war remarkably different from that of the post-war historians. Standing