Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [56]
The first lieutenant peered constantly seaward, sometimes making a slow sweep of the horizon with his binoculars. Willie imitated him, but the sea was empty, and he soon became bored.
“Mr. Maryk,” he said, “what do you think of Mr. Keefer?”
The first lieutenant gave him a brief surprised side glance. “Damn keen mind.”
“Do you think he’s a good officer?” Willie knew he was trampling on etiquette, but curiosity was too strong. The first lieutenant put his binoculars to his eyes.
“Gets by,” he said, “like the rest of us.”
“He doesn’t seem to think much of the Navy.”
Maryk grunted. “Tom don’t think much of a lot of things. Get him started on the West Coast sometime.”
“Are you from the West Coast?”
Maryk nodded. “Tom says it’s the last primitive area left for the anthropologists to study. He says we’re a lot of white tennis-playing Bushmen.”
“What did you do before the war, sir?”
Maryk glanced uneasily at the dozing captain. “Fisherman.”
“Commercial fishing?”
“Look, Keith, we’re not supposed to shoot the breeze on watch. If you have questions about the ship or the watch that’s a different matter, of course.”
“Sorry.”
“Skipper’s easygoing about it. But it’s a good idea to keep your mind on the watch.”
“Certainly, sir. There just wasn’t much happening, so-”
“When anything happens it generally happens fast.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
After a while Maryk said, “There they are.”
“Where, sir?”
“One point to starboard.”
Willie trained his glasses in that direction. Behind the iridescent edges of the empty waves there was nothing-except-the thought there might be two, no, three, faint black points like bristles on an unshaven chin.
Maryk woke the captain. “Three cans hull down, sir, about three miles west of rendezvous.”
The captain mumbled, “Okay, go to twenty knots and close ’em.”
The three hairlines became masts, then the hulls appeared, and soon the ships were plain to see. Willie knew the silhouettes well: three stacks with an untidy gap between the second and third; feeble little three-inch guns; slanting flush deck; two cranes crooked queerly over the stern. They were sister bastards to the Caine, destroyer-minesweepers. The captain stretched, and came out to the wing. “Well, which ones are they?”
The signalman Engstrand seized a long telescope and squinted at the bow numbers. “Frobisher-” he said. “Jones-Moulton.”
“Moulton!” exclaimed the captain. “Look again. She’s in SoPac.”
“DMS 21, sir,” said Engstrand.
“What do you know. Duke Sammis with us again, hey? Send ‘em ‘Greetings to the Iron Duke from De Vriess.’ ”
The signalman began blinking the shutter of the large searchlight mounted on the flagbag. Willie picked up the telescope and trained it on the Moulton. The three DMS’s were coming closer every minute. Willie thought he saw the long sad face of Keggs hanging over the rail on the bridge. “I know someone on the Moulton!” he said.
“Fine,” said De Vriess. “Makes the operation more cozy- Keep the conn, Steve, and fall in a thousand yards aft of the Moulton, column open order.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Willie had been one of Furnald Hall’s champions of the blinker light. He was proud of his ability to send Morse at eight words a minute. Nothing seemed more natural than for him to take the shutter handle, when Engstrand relinquished it, and start blinking at the Moulton. He wanted to greet Keggs, and he also thought that his prowess at Morse might cause the captain to think a little more highly of him. The signalman-Engstrand and two assistants-stared at him, appalled. “Don’t worry, my lads,” he said. “I can send.” How like sailors it was, he thought, to hug their little accomplishments, and resent an officer who could match them. The Moulton returned his call. He began spelling out “H-E-L-L-O K-E-G-G-S-W-H-A-T A-”
“Mister Keith,” said the captain’s voice at his ear, “what are you doing?”
Willie