Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [202]
Queeg, braced in a forward corner against the windows, said, “If you’re so worried about the safety of this ship, how can you go monkeying around looking for survivors?”
“Sir, we can’t just steam by and forget it-” said the exec.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I think we should look for survivors. In fact I order you to do so. I’m simply pointing out your inconsistency for the record-”
“Left standard rudder,” said Maryk.
“I should also like to point out,” said Queeg, “that twenty minutes before you illegally relieved me I ordered you to get rid of that helmsman and you disobeyed me. He’s the worst troublemaker on the ship. When he obeyed you instead of me he became party to this mutiny, and he’ll hang if it’s-”
A roaring wave broke over the Caine’s bridge and buffeted the ship far over to port, and Queeg tumbled to his hands and knees. The other officers slid and tottered about, clutching at each other. Once again the minesweeper labored in difficulties as the wind caught it and swept it sideways. Maryk went to the telegraph stand and manipulated the engines, altering the settings frequently, and shouting swift-changing rudder orders. He coaxed the ship around to the south, and steamed ahead until the hulk came vaguely in view again. Then he commenced a careful circling maneuver, keeping the Caine well clear of the foundering wreck. It was entirely awash now; only when a deep trough rode under it did the round red bottom break to the surface. The officers muttered among themselves. Queeg, his arm around the compass stand, stared out of the window.
It took forty minutes for the Caine to maneuver through a full circle around the lost ship against wind and waves, and all the time it wallowed and thrashed as badly as it had been doing since morning, and took several terrible rolls to leeward. Willie was scared each time. But he now knew the difference between honest fright and animal terror. One was bearable, human, not incapacitating; the other was moral castration. He was no longer terrorized, and felt he no longer could be, even if the ship went down, provided Maryk were in the water near him.
The exec was out on the wing, shielding his eyes from the hurtling spray with both hands, peering around at the heaving spires of black water, as the Caine steadied on north again. He came into the wheelhouse, trailing streams from his clothes. “We’ll come around once more and then quit,” he said. “I think it’s gone under. I can’t see it- Left standard rudder.”
Willie groped to the barometer once more and saw that it had risen to 29.10 He crawled to Maryk’s side and reported the reading, yelling into the exec’s ear. Maryk nodded. Willie rubbed his hands over his face, fevered with the sting of the flailing spray. “Why the hell doesn’t it let up, Steve, if the barometer’s rising?”
“Oh, Jesus, Willie, we’re thirty miles from a typhoon center. Anything can happen in here.” The exec grinned into the wind, baring his teeth. “We may still catch all kinds of hell-Rudder amidships!” he shouted through the doorway.
“Rudder amidships, sirs”
“Getting tired, Stilwell?”
“No, sir. Wrestle with this son of a bitch all day if you want me to, sir!”
“Very good.”
The door of the radar shack pushed open, and the telephone talker, Grubnecker, poked out his whiskered face. “Something that looks like a raft on the starboard quarter, sir, Bellison reports.”
Maryk, followed by Willie, went trampling through the wheelhouse to the other side of the bridge, shouting at Stilwell as he passed, “Hard right rudder!”
At first they saw nothing but peaks and troughs of water veiled by spray; then, broad on the beam, as the Caine rose to the top of a swell, they both spied a black dot sliding down the slant of a wave.
“I think there’s three guys on it!” shrieked Willie. He danced aft to the flagbag rails for a better