Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [48]
“Pardon me, Captain.”
“Yes, Keith?”
“I request permission to go ashore.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t think of depriving you of such charming company,” said the captain with elephantine gallantry. The nurses giggled. Miss Jones said, “Hi, Keither.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I presume you’ve checked out with Adams?”
“Well, that’s it, sir. That’s why I’m checking with you.” The captain gave him a quizzical look. “See, there’s an assignment in my qualification course I haven’t completed. It was handed to me yesterday and I’ve been on the go every second since and-”
“Every second? Seems to me I’ve seen you at rest once or twice. What were you doing just now?”
“I-I plead guilty to about three hours of sleep in the past forty-eight, sir-”
“Well, why don’t you sit down and bat that assignment out now? It won’t take long. The girls will wait. I’ll do my best to amuse them.”
“The sadist,” said Willie to himself. Aloud, “Thank you, Captain, but-”
“I’ll give you a ti-ip,” said De Vriess, in a teasing singsong. “The sketches you need are right up there in the ship’s organization book. All you have to do is trace them. That’s all I did in my day.” He resumed his chitchat with the girls, who seemed fascinated by him.
Willie took down the book and found the sketches. He calculated that it would require three quarters of an hour to trace the diagrams and copy the names of the spaces.
“Pardon me, Captain.”
“Yes?” said De Vriess pleasantly.
“This being a purely mechanical chore, as you say, would it be acceptable to you if I promise to turn it in prior to 0800 tomorrow? I can do it tonight.”
“No telling what shape you’ll be in tonight, Keith. Better do it now.”
The nurses laughed, and Miss Jones said, “Poor Keither.”
“Use my room, Keith,” said the communicator. “There’s a ruler and tracing paper in my upper right-hand drawer.”
Blushing, seething, Willie bolted from the wardroom. “War is hell,” he heard the captain say, and the girls gurgled. Willie made the sketches in twenty minutes, grinding his teeth each time he heard feminine laughter from the wardroom. With the papers in his hand he climbed up on deck through a scuttle to avoid the captain and the girls, and went looking for Adams. But the senior watch officer had left the ship. There was no help for it; Willie had to go below and, his cheeks flaming, hand the sketches to the captain. De Vriess inspected them carefully while the girls cooed and whispered. “Very nice,” he said after a long, humiliating pause. “A little hasty, but under the circumstances, very nice.”
Brief giggle by Nurse Carter.
“May I go now, sir?”
“Why not?” said the captain magnanimously. He rose. “May I give you people a lift? I have a station wagon.”
“No, thank you, sir,” Willie growled.
The captain raised his eyebrows. “No? Too bad. Good-by, Miss Carter-Miss Jones. Very pleasant having you aboard.” He walked out, putting on his hat with a self-satisfied tilt.
The party that followed was a dampened one. Willie covered his fury with a dull silence. The girls found little to say. In Honolulu they picked up a third nurse earmarked for Tom Keefer, an extravagantly stupid, beautiful blonde. She displayed a marked and instant liking for Roland. Tom retreated into long drunken quotations from Paradise Lost and the poems of T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins while Roland and the blonde carried on a boisterous flirtation. This was during dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Willie drank more than he ever had in his life. They went on to a Danny Kaye movie at CincPac, which he saw blurrily, as through a rainy window. He fell sound asleep in the middle of it; and never really woke, though he walked obediently wherever he was led, until he found himself riding in a taxi with Tom Keefer.
“Where are we? What time is it? Where are the others?” he grumbled. His mouth tasted sickeningly of rum and Chinese food.
“We’re on the way home, Willie. Home to the Caine. Party’s over.”
“The Caine.