Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [159]
The Caine was sent to an anti-submarine patrol sector as soon as the invasion got under way, and there it steamed endlessly in a figure-eight path several thousand yards long. Twelve other ships moved in unison with it, back and forth at ten knots, in a protective fanning curtain around the transports anchored close to the beach. It seemed like a safe place, and Willie’s spirits improved as the hours passed. His morale stiffened when he observed that Queeg was really shuttling from one side of the bridge to the other so as to remain sheltered from the beach. There was no mistaking it this time, because the ship kept reversing course every few minutes; and regular as clockwork, each time it presented a new side to Saipan, Queeg would come strolling around to the seaward wing. This gave Willie a dearly cherished chance to display his contempt for the captain by doing exactly the opposite. He sensed that the sailors were noticing Queeg’s conduct; there was a lot of sly grinning and muttering. Willie ostentatiously moved to the exposed side with each turn of the ship. Queeg took no apparent notice.
Things were so quiet in the patrol sector that the captain secured the crew from battle stations at noon, and went below to his cabin. Willie was relieved of the deck. He was desperately tired, having been awake for more than thirty hours, but the captain’s edict against daytime sleeping made retirement to his bunk too risky. He knew Queeg was heavily asleep in his cabin; but there was always the chance that a call of nature would bring the captain down to the wardroom. Willie went up to the flying bridge, nestled down on the hot iron deck, and slept in the blazing sun like a cat for four hours. He went back to the wheelhouse for the afternoon watch much refreshed.
Shortly after he took over the binoculars from Keefer, a Navy Corsair came flying across the northern hills of the island toward the Caine. All at once it burst into a rosette of flame, and arced into the water with a great splash halfway between the minesweeper and another patrol vessel, the new destroyer Stanfield. Willie telephoned the captain.
“Kay, head over there at twenty knots,” was the sleepy reply. Queeg arrived on the bridge wearing khaki shorts and bedroom slippers, yawning, as the Caine and the Stanfield were closing to within a thousand yards of each other at the place of the crash. There was no remnant of the plane on the water; only a rainbow-colored film of gasoline.
“Bye-bye Corsair,” said Queeg.
“Went down like a stone,” murmured Willie. He glanced at the paunchy little captain, and felt a stir of shame. What had happened to his sense of proportion, he wondered, that a comic-opera monster like Queeg could annoy or upset him? A man had just died before his eyes. The buzzing TBS transmissions spoke of thousands more dying on the shore. He had not yet seen blood spilled on the Caine except in careless handling of tools. Thought Willie, “I’m in danger of becoming a self-pitying whiner after all, the scum of military life-”
Towers of white water suddenly grew out of the sea on both sides of the Stanfield. For half a second Willie was puzzled, and thought they might be a queer tropical weather trick. Then the words burst from his throat: “Captain! The Stanfield’s being straddled!”
Queeg looked at the subsiding splashes and shouted into the pilothouse. “All engines ahead full! hard right rudder!”
“There, Captain!” Willie pointed to an orange flash followed by a puff of black smoke, high on a cliff to the north. “That’s the battery, sir!” He ran out on the wing, and shouted up to the flying bridge, “Gun watch!”
Jorgensen poked his head over the bulwark. “Yes, Mr. Keith?”
“Shore battery bears 045 relative, distance 4000, top of the cliff! There, see that flash? Train the main battery on it!”
“Aye aye,