Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [53]
“Captain told me to get in out of the rain.”
“Hell, you probably were under his feet. Come on out. You won’t melt.”
“Gladly, sir.” Willie followed him out into the weather, irritated at being in the wrong whatever he did.
“Learn anything,” asked Maryk, peering down-channel, “from that backing maneuver?”
“Seemed pretty routine,” said Willie.
Maryk dipped his binoculars and looked at Willie, showing all his teeth in a mystified grin. “You ever been on a bridge before, Keith?”
“No, sir.”
Maryk nodded, and resumed his search of the channel through the glasses.
“Why,” said Willie, wiping rain from his eyes, “was there anything remarkable about it?”
“Christ, no, no,” said Maryk. “Any ensign could have handled the ship the way the old man did. I thought maybe you were impressed for no good reason.” He grinned again and walked to the other side of the bridge.
The squall passed and the sun came out brilliantly as the Caine cleared the channel entrance. When Willie came off watch he went to the forescastle to enjoy the view of Diamond Head and Oahu’s green hills. The ship knifed through calm blue water at twenty knots. He was agreeably surprised at the old minesweeper’s brisk speed. There were traces of destroyer grandeur yet in the rusty ruin. The deck rolled steeply, and sparkling spray flew up from the bow wave, and Willie was proud of not being in the least seasick. For the first time since his arrival on the Caine he felt moderately happy.
But he made the mistake of going below for a cup of coffee. Keefer captured him and set him to work correcting publications. This was the dreariest of all communication chores. Willie hated the red ink, the scissors and smelly paste, and the interminable niggling corrections: “Page 9 para. 0862 line 3: change All prescribed gunnery exercises to read All gunnery exercises prescribed by USNF 7A.” He had visions of thousands of ensigns all over the globe straining their eyes and crooking their backs over these preposterous trifles.
The motion of the ship, heaving the green table up and down as he bent over it, began to trouble him. He noticed with annoyance that some of the corrections which Keefer had dumped on him in a heap were very old. Several of them he had himself entered in CincPac’s books, months ago. At one point he threw down the pen with an exclamation of disgust. He had spent an hour minutely entering a set of ink corrections which were obsolete; further down in the pile there were new printed pages to replace them. “Damn,” he said to Carmody, who was decoding messages beside him, “doesn’t Keefer ever enter corrections? These things are piled up since the last war.”
“Lieutenant Keefer’s too busy with his novel,” burst out Carmody bitterly, stroking his faint mustache.
“What novel?”
“He’s writing some kind of novel. Half the time at night when I’m trying to sleep he’s pacing around talking to himself. Then in the daytime he flakes out. Why, he can work these damn decoding gismos ten times faster than anybody in the wardroom. He spent six months on the beach studying them. He could clear up the whole traffic in a couple of hours a day. But we’re always behind, and you, Rabbitt and I are clearing about ninety per cent of it. I think he’s a foul ball.”
“Have you read any of the novel?”
“Hell, I have no time to read novels by good authors. Why should I bother with his tripe?” Carmody twisted his blue-and-gold Annapolis ring nervously with his thumb. He rose and poured himself coffee. “Want some Joe?”
“Thanks- Well, look,” said Willie, accepting the cup, “this kind of thing must be horribly dull to a man of his talents.”
“What talents?” Carmody dropped into a chair.
“He’s a professional author, Carmody. Didn’t you know that? He’s had stories in magazines. The Theatre Guild had an option on one of his plays-”
“So what? He’s on the Caine now, just like you and me.”
“If he brings a great novel off the Caine,” said Willie, “it’ll be a far greater contribution