Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [189]
“Aye aye, sir.” A sudden sharp roll threw Willie off balance and he fell against Queeg. The feel of the captain’s dank naked skin was horrid to him. He jumped away. “Sorry, sir.”
“Kay. Get going.”
Willie went to the radio shack, checked through the Fox schedules, and found nothing. He drank coffee with the bleary, white-faced operators and left, glad to escape from the nightmarish beep-beeps. He had hardly dozed off in his bunk when the same radioman who had brought the coffee shook him awake. “Storm warning, sir. All ships from CincPoa. Just came in.”
Willie decoded the message and brought it up to the charthouse. Queeg was lying in the bunk, smoking. Maryk perched on the stool, his head resting on his arms on the desk.
“Ah, found something, did you? I thought so.” The captain took the message and read it.
“Sir, I didn’t find it in any back skeds. It came in ten minutes ago-”
“I see. Just another one of those funny coincidences that dot your career, Willie, hey? Well, I’m glad I got you to check, anyway, although of course it just came in. Plot it, Steve.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The exec studied the penciled slip and picked up his dividers. “That might be it, sir. East and south of us-three hundred miles- Let’s see. Three hundred seventeen, exactly- They call it a mild circular disturbance, though-”
“Well, fine. The milder the better.”
“Sir,” said Willie, “if you think I’m lying about that despatch you can check in the radio shack-”
“Why, Willie, who’s accusing anybody of lying?” The captain smiled slyly, his face lined with black wrinkles in the red light, and puffed on his cigarette. The glowing end was queerly whitish.
“Sir, when you say a funny coincidence-”
“Ah, ah, Willie, don’t go reading meeen-ings,” sang the captain. “That’s the sure sign of a guilty conscience. You can go now.”
Willie felt the all-familiar knotted sickness in his stomach and pounding of the heart. “Aye aye, sir.” He went out on the wing and stood where the fresh air could blow in his face. When the ship rolled to port his chest pressed on the bulwark until he seemed to be lying on a metal projection looking down into the sea. The next moment he had to cling to the bulwark to keep from toppling backward. He felt his hands trembling on the dank, slippery edge of the bulwark. He stayed on the bridge, snuffing the wind and staring out over the heaving, choppy sea until Paynter came up to relieve the deck. Then he went below with Harding, and the two officers drank coffee standing up in the dark wardroom, each with an elbow hooked around a stanchion. A small red glow came from the heating grill of the Silex.
“Rolling’s worse,” Harding said.
“Not as bad as outside Frisco last year.”
“No. ... Any typhoons around?”
“No. Mild disturbance to the southeast. We’re probably catching the swell from it.”
“My wife is worried as hell about typhoons. She wrote me she keeps dreaming we get caught in one.”
“Well, hell, what if we do? We put the wind on our quarter or bow, depending where we are, and get the hell out. I hope that’s our worst trouble on this cruise.”
They wedged their cups and saucers into the indented board on the side table, and went to their rooms. Willie decided against taking Phenobarbital. He switched on his bed lamp, read Dickens for about a minute, and fell asleep with the light shining in his face.
“How the hell are they going to fuel in this sea?”
Willie and Maryk stood on the careening port wing. It was ten o’clock in the morning. In the dismal yellow-gray daylight the sea was heaving and bubbling like black mud. White streaks of foam lay along the tops of the deep troughs. The wind pulled at Willie’s eyelids. All around there was nothing to be seen but ridges and valleys of water, except at moments when the old minesweeper labored to the top of a swell. Then they caught glimpses of ships everywhere, the great battleships and carriers, the tankers, the destroyers, all plunging through waves which broke solidly on their forecastles and smashed into creamy streams.