Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [277]
In less than a minute they say a mine dead ahead in a mantle of yellow water. Keefer danced three times completely around the bridge, yelling contradictory maneuvering orders, as the Caine bore down on the mine and the guns hammered away at it. They were within a hundred feet of it when it vanished, with a hellish howl and a tremendous cataract climbing to the sky. Then the lookouts spotted another mine ahead on the port side, and almost at the same moment the Caine cut loose two more mines. There was pure bedlam on the bridge for five minutes.
But every novelty, even a deadly novelty like minesweeping, gets its bloom rubbed off quickly and settles into a routine. By the time the Caine had swept seven mines and exploded half a dozen, it became clear even to the nervous captain that the process wasn’t a hard one, nor, with luck, mortally dangerous. So he went to the other extreme, and became very debonair in his conning, and nuzzled up so close to a couple of mines in order to shoot at them that he scared Willie badly.
There was an other-worldly strangeness about that morning for Willie. He had long ago become convinced that it was part of the fate of the Caine never to sweep a mine. The irony had seemed a fitting crown for the ship’s freakish career. He had studied up his minesweeping, all the same, but he had really thought the manual was just another useless book in the safe, like the Dutch and French codes. He had even begun, quite irrationally, to disbelieve in the existence of mines. All the mess of gear on the fantail, then, really served a purpose! The paravanes did dive below the level of anchored mines and kite there on an even keel; the cutting cables actually did cut the mine moorings; and the mines really were iron balls that could blow up a ship. It was one more proof-Willie was getting used to them by now, but he still felt uneasy shame when another cropped up-that the Navy more or less knew what it was doing.
The minesweeping career of the Caine was destined to be brief-to that extent his instinct had been right. Willie was just beginning to enjoy the perilous game when the fuel pumps of number-one boiler collapsed, and the ship was slowed to twelve knots. This reduced the maneuverability of the long vessel below the safety point in an area of drifting mines. The OTC ordered the Caine to drop out of line and return to Okinawa. It was just before noon. An auxiliary mine sweeper, one of the clean-up ships in the rear, steamed forward to close the gap, and the Caine faltered and turned away. Keggs, on the bridge of the Moulton next in line, waved good-by to Willie and sent him a blinker message: Lucky. Maybe I’ll try throwing a wrench in my pumps, too. See you later.
On the way back they had the melancholy pleasure of setting off one more mine floating miles behind the sweepers. Willie was the one who spotted the grim brown ball. He watched the mine through the glasses, feeling a sort of proprietary affection for it as it resisted the hail of machine-gun bullets splattering it. Then suddenly it wasn’t there, replaced in an eye blink by a column of boiling pink water; and World War II was over for the U.S.S. Caine.
Nobody knew that at the time, of course. The ship limped into Buckner Bay (as Nakagusuku Wan had been renamed), and Keefer sent a despatch to the Pluto requesting a period alongside. Next day he received an acid official letter from the tender. Owing to a rush of more urgent work, the Caine could not be accommodated alongside until late in August. Keefer was