Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [183]
Merely from the backwash of the storm, the old minesweeper and its crew had taken a miserable beating. The rolling and plunging had smashed dishes, chairs, bottles, and small instruments, had tumbled stores helter-skelter out of shelves in dirty heaps on the deck, had shipped water which sloshed about in the passageways, filthy brown, and had sprung leaks in many places of the rusty hull. Antennas were down, and a boat davit and both depth-charge racks were buckled. There had been no hot food for two days. The unwashed, hairy crew had slept for only minutes at a time in their gyrating bunks. Ulithi, sunny and green, its lagoon an azure mirror, looked like Paradise to the men of the Caine-on this particular arrival. They were accustomed to refer to it as a hole, with varying foul modifiers.
“Halsey’s here on the New Jersey,” said Maryk in a low voice to Keefer, on the port wing, as the Caine steamed into Mugai Channel. “It’s flying Sopus and a four-star flag.”
Keefer peered through binoculars at the new gray battleship riding to a slack anchor chain near the channel entrance. “We’re under Com Fifth, aren’t we?” he whispered. “We missed our chance at Guam. If we go back, well-”
Queeg, on the other wing, was shouting to the helm, “Steady as you go! I said steady, damn it! Don’t run down that channel buoy!”
The exec said, “Halsey’s good enough for me. It’s an emergency. We’ll go over there as soon as we drop the hook-”
“Mister Maryk,” called Queeg, “if you’ll be kind enough to give me my anchor bearings-”
The two officers sat in the stern sheets of the gig, staring at the myriad gray jellyfish which pullulated under the shining surface of the lagoon. Keefer smoked. Maryk beat a tattoo on the brown leather portfolio containing the medical log. The gig chugged placidly down-channel toward the imposing New Jersey, two miles away. “Sun’s too damn hot. Let’s get under the canopy,” said the novelist, flipping his cigarette into the water. “Just our luck,” he went on in a low voice, when they were settled on the cracked leather cushions, screened from the gig crew by the noise of the motor, “that he’s been so goddamned normal the past week.”
“Well, it’s been that way right along,” said the exec. “Some crazy thing, then a spell when he’s okay, then something even crazier.”
“I know. Steve, d’you suppose there’s a chance we’ll get sent up to Halsey himself?”
“I think maybe so. I don’t think Article 184 comes up every day-”
“I don’t know how I’ll like looking Halsey in the eye and telling him I’ve got a crazy captain.”
“I don’t like the idea of it much myself.”
“Fact is, Steve, Old Yellowstain handled the ship fairly well in the storm, you must admit that. Far be it from me to defend him, but what’s true is true-”
“Listen, for a sick man he did fine,” said the exec. “Only thing is, I never sleep good, waiting for him to go off his rocker again.”
“It’s amazing,” Keefer said, lighting another cigarette, “how cleverly these paranoids walk the narrow dividing line between outright lunacy and acts which can be logically explained. It’s their distinguishing characteristic. In fact, once grant their basic premise, which may only be out of phase with reality by thirty degrees or so-not necessarily a hundred eighty degrees-and everything they do becomes justifiable. Take Old Yellowstain. What is his basic premise? That everyone on the Caine is a liar, a traitor, and a funk-off, so that the ship can only function if he constantly nags and spies and threatens and screeches and hands out draconic punishments. Now, how do you go about proving that his premise is wrong?”
“You couldn’t ever prove it to him,” said Maryk. “That’s his sickness, isn’t it? But any outsider knows that there’s no ship with such a thoroughly no-good complement.”
“Well, let’s hope an outsider named Halsey figures it that way.”
After a while Keefer said, “Take that log of yours. Individually, every one of those items could be justified by Queeg. Stopping the movies for six months?