Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [137]
Maryk steered for the atoll. There was nothing between the Caine and the Japanese island of Enneubing (which the Navy had nicknamed “Jacob”) but a few thousand yards of choppy water with whitecaps. Willie could see details on the beach now: a hut, an abandoned rowboat, oil drums, shattered palm trees. He thought he had never seen a green so deep and rich as the green of Jacob Island, nor a white so white as its sands. There were two pretty orange fires on it, showing above the treetops; and not a movement of life anywhere. He looked around at the string of LVT’s bobbing behind, and noticed a sailor in the lead boat frantically waving semaphore flags. The ensign signaled with his arms, “Go ahead.” The flags rapidly spelled out, C-H-R-I-S-T S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Several times the sailor fell off his signaling perch as the LVT dived into foaming troughs. Curtains of spray were dousing the attack boats every few seconds.
Queeg came around the bridgehouse and scurried up to Willie. “Well, well, what is it?” he said impatiently, and “What the hell do they want?” and “Well, can you read it or can’t you?”
“They want us to slow down, Captain.”
“That’s too goddamn bad. We’re supposed to be on the line of departure at H-hour. If they can’t keep up with us we’ll throw over a dye marker when we reach the spot, and that’ll have to do.” Queeg squinted at the island, and ran into the pilothouse. “Jesus, Steve, do you want to run up on the beach?”
“No, sir. About fifteen hundred yards to go to the line of departure.”
“Fifteen hundred? You’re crazy! The beach isn’t fifteen hundred yards away-”
“Captain, the cutoff tangent on Roi Island is 045. Tangent now is 065.”
Urban, at the port alidade, called out, “Left tangent Roi, 064.”
The captain darted out on the port wing and pushed the little signalman aside. “You must be blind.” He put his eye to the alidade. “I thought so! Zero five four and that’s allowing nothing for set and drift along the line of bearing. We’re inside the departure point now. Right full rudder! Right full rudder!” he shouted. “All engines ahead full! Throw over a dye marker!”
The stacks puffed billows of black smoke. The Caine heeled sharply to starboard and scored a tight white semicircle on the sea as it sped. around on the reverse course. Within a minute the LVT’s of Jacob Group Four were a line of bobbing specks far astern. Near them on the sea was a spreading stain of bright yellow.
Later in the day, however, the Caine steamed bravely through the channel between Jacob and Ivan, together with a hundred other ships of the attack force. The American flag was flying on both islands. The Caine dropped anchor in the lagoon. Queeg ordered the posting of armed guards all along the sides of the ship to shoot any stray Japanese swimmers, and dismissed the crew from battle stations. There was nothing else to do. Hemmed in by transports, cargo ships, and destroyers, the Caine couldn’t have fired at the beach even if ordered to. The grateful sailors left their gun posts, where they had been lolling for fourteen hours, and most of them went below at once to sleep. Sensitive as cats to the likelihood of danger, they knew that none threatened any more at Kwajalein. Willie’s eyes stung with sleepiness, too, but he went up to the flying bridge to watch the show.
It was a queer battle, the fight for Kwajalein, to be a young man’s initiation into warfare. Possibly it was the queerest that has ever been fought. It had been won thousands of miles away, months before a shot was fired. The admirals had guessed correctly that the Mikado’s “unsinkable carriers” were short of an important commodity: planes. Too many Japanese aircraft had been clawed out of the sky in the broils around the Solomons. As for warships, the remaining ones had become precious to the empire; and frugally guarded weapons are no weapons at all. With the mere arrival of the American array of ships and men, the battle