Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [283]
I am at Okinawa. Today I relieved Keefer as captain. I came through the war unscratched, and, I’m sure, a little better for having been somewhat useful for the first time in my life.
I love you-
WILLIE
Then he wrote to his mother.
Even at anchor, on an idle, forgotten old ship, Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identity, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of his ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before. He had the sense of having been reduced from an individual to a sort of brain of a composite animal, the crew and ship combined. The reward for these disturbing sensations came when he walked the decks. Power seemed to flow out of the plates into his body. The respectful demeanor of the officers and crew thrust him into a loneliness he had never known, but it wasn’t a frigid loneliness. Through the transparent barrier of manners came the warming unspoken word that his men liked him and believed in him.
He gave them fresh reason to do so in his first week as captain. A typhoon brushed past Okinawa one night, and Willie was on the bridge continuously for thirty hours, maneuvering finely with his engines and rudder to keep the anchor from dragging. It was a horrible night. The newcomers aboard did a lot of worrying and praying; the crewmen who had lived through December 18 were less terrified. When gray dawn broke over the heaving, white-capped harbor, it revealed a dozen ships stranded on beaches and reefs all around the bay, some high and dry, some lying on their sides in shallow water. One of the wrecks was a DMS. Of course the sight of these unhappy ships made everyone on the Caine feel especially snug and smug and comfortable; and Captain Keith was established as a hero.
New storm warnings kept coming in all day. More typhoons were loose in the South Pacific, and the paths of two of them indicated that they might hit Okinawa. When the waves in the harbor subsided Willie rode over to the Moulton in his gig. The DMS squadron, back from the Tokyo sweep, were ranged in the south anchorage. He burst in on Keggs in his cabin.
“Ed, are you ready for sea?”
“Hi, Willie! Sure- Need fuel and chow and such, but-”
“I want to get the hell out of here. MinePac doesn’t know what to do with me. He’s afraid to send me to sea because I might have another breakdown. Come on over to the Terror. Maybe we can talk him into letting both of us go. You can escort me.”
Keggs looked scared and perplexed. “Willie, we don’t originate sailing orders in this outfit.”
“Listen, boy, everything’s broken wide open. None of the big brass knows what to do from day to day. The war’s over. It’s all different-”
“Well, sure, but we still aren’t-”
“Ed, what can we lose? Wouldn’t you like to be under way for home at 0900 tomorrow?”
“Would I? Jesus-”
“Then come along.”
They tracked down the operations officer in the wardroom of the Terror, drinking coffee alone at the end of a long table. He greeted Willie with a friendly smile. “How’d you keep that old wreck of yours afloat in the blow, Keith? Well done. Have some coffee. You, too, Keggs.”
The two captains sat on either side of the operations officer. Willie said at once, “Sir, I want to take the Caine back to the States. Now. Today. I don’t want to ride out any more typhoons with the engine plant I’ve got.”
“Wait a minute, Lieutenant. Nobody asked you for suggestions about sailing orders-”
“I’m acting for the safety of my ship-”
“You’re not seaworthy-”
“I am as of the moment. My crew fixed the pumps. Sitting here through the next two typhoons isn’t going to make me any more seaworthy-”
“Well, you can always be surveyed here, you know-there’s a board on the way-”
“But I can still get her home. She has scrap value you’ll lose if you