Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [247]
“Well, I-well, by what happened. After relieving the captain I rescued five survivors from the George Black at the height of the typhoon. I don’t think a panicky officer could have effected the rescue under those conditions.”
“Did you relieve Captain Queeg willfully?”
“Yes, I knew what I was doing.”
“Did you relieve without authority?”
“No. My authority was Articles 184, 185, 186.”
“Did you relieve without justifiable cause?”
“No. My justifiable cause was the captain’s mental breakdown at a time when the ship was in danger.”
“No further questions.”
Challee came toward Maryk, saying in a tone of open hostility, “Just to start with, Mr. Maryk, wasn’t the captain on the bridge all the time you were effecting that rescue?”
“He was.”
“Didn’t he order you to come about and look for survivors?”
“After I’d already come about, he said he was ordering me to do it.”
“Didn’t he direct you in the whole rescue operation?”
“Well, he kept commenting on my orders.”
“Could you possibly have effected that rescue without his orders, or comments, as you call them?”
“Well, I tried to be polite. He was still senior officer present. But I was too busy to pay attention to his comments and I don’t remember them.”
“Didn’t he even have to remind you to do an elementary thing like putting the cargo net over the side?”
“I was holding off on the cargo net till the last minute. I didn’t want it to be carried away by the seas. He reminded me, but he didn’t have to.”
“Mr. Maryk, what kind of rating would you give yourself for loyalty to your captain?”
“That’s hard to answer.”
“I’ll bet it is. Four-oh? Two-five? Zero?”
“I think I was a loyal officer.”
“Did you issue a seventy-two-hour pass to Stilwell in December ’43 against the captain’s express instructions?”
“I did.”
“Do you call that a loyal act?”
“No. It was a disloyal act.”
Challee was caught off balance. He stared at Maryk. “You admit to a disloyal act in your first days as executive officer?”
“Yes.”
“Very interesting. Why did you commit a disloyal act?”
“I have no excuse. I didn’t do that kind of thing again.”
“But you admit starting your term as exec as you finished it, with disloyalty?”
“I don’t admit to finishing disloyally.”
“Did you hear sarcastic and insulting remarks passed by the other officers about your captain?”
“I did.”
“How did you punish them?”
“I didn’t punish them. I repeatedly warned them against the practice and I didn’t allow it in my presence.”
“But you didn’t punish this outright insubordination? Why didn’t you?”
“There are limits to what you can do in a situation.”
Challee clawed over Maryk’s story of the typhoon, catching him in minor inconsistencies and memory lapses. But the exec, with dull stolidness, admitted to mistakes and inconsistencies, and stuck to his story. Then the judge advocate switched to Maryk’s background, and brought out that his grades had been lower than average in high school and college, and that he had had no training in psychiatry or any other science.
“Then where did you get all these highfalutin ideas about paranoia?”
“Out of books.”
“What books? Name the titles.”
“Medical-type books about mental illness.”
“Was that your intellectual hobby-reading about psychiatry?”
“No. I borrowed the books off of ships’ doctors here and there, after I began to think the captain was sick.”
“And you, with your background-did you imagine you understood these highly technical, abstruse scientific works?”
“Well, I got something out of them.”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’?”
“Yes.”
“You got a headful of terms you didn’t understand, and on that basis you had the temerity to depose a commanding officer on the grounds of mental illness. Is that correct?”
“I didn’t relieve him because of what the books said. The ship was in danger-”
“Never mind the ship. We’re discussing your grasp of psychiatry, Lieutenant.” Challee belabored him with dozens of psychiatric terms, asking him for definitions and explanations. He reduced the exec to glum monosyllables