Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [99]
Queeg smiled, evidently judging that he had pricked Keefer’s core of vanity. He nodded several times and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, Tom, you take this report of Keith’s, and study it. Try to see why Willie has written a perfect report whereas yours is a phony gun-deck job.”
In his own room, Keefer performed a series of grotesque monkeylike capers, during which he several times rubbed both reports forcibly against his behind. Then he dived into his bunk and buried his face in his pillow, shaking with choked laughter.
Captain Grace stood beside the admiral’s heavy mahogany desk in a wood-paneled, green-carpeted room.
“I wish you’d have let me see the report before accepting it,” the admiral was grumbling. He was a lean, wintry little man with piercing blue eyes.
“I’m sorry, Admiral.”
“It’s all right. What’s your impression of this Queeg? That’s the main thing.”
Grace drummed on the desk softly with his fingers for a moment. “An old lady, I’m afraid, sir. I think he’s earnest enough and probably pretty tough, but he’s one of those that are never wrong, no matter how wrong they are-always some damn argument to defend himself, you know-and I don’t think he’s very bright. One of the low men in his class. I’ve been checking around.”
“How about that towline? What’s the story? Did he cut it or didn’t he?”
Grace shook his head dubiously. “Well, it’s one of those things. He got terribly offended when I asked about it-seemed sincere enough. I more or less had to take his word that it didn’t happen. You’d have to run a court of inquiry to get at the definite facts, sir, and I don’t know-”
“Hell, we can’t go tracking down scuttlebutt with courts of inquiry. But I don’t like the cut of the man’s jib, Grace. Too many questionable occurrences too fast. Do you think I ought to recommend to the Bureau that he be relieved?”
“No, sir,” said Grace promptly. “In all fairness to the man, he’s done nothing that we know of definitely to warrant that. Overtension in his first command could account for everything that’s happened so far.”
“Well, then-look here, CincPac wants me to send two destroyer-minesweepers back to the States for overhaul and new radar installations, to go on the Flintlock push,” said the admiral. “What’s wrong with sending the Caine?”
“Nothing, sir. It’s been in the forward area twenty-two months-”
“Okay. Get up the despatch recommending the Caine. Let this Queeg pull his next butch somewhere else.”
A yard overhaul in the States was the most precious, prayed-for assignment of the war. In a year of combat steaming De Vriess had been unable to earn it for the old disintegrating Caine. Queeg had achieved it in his first four weeks, commanding the Navy’s best goddamn target-towing ship.
CHAPTER 15
Joys of the Homeward Voyage
When the despatch came, it was New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July, and every man’s birthday and wedding day aboard the Caine. Willie Keith, too, felt his blood bubbling, though by Caine standard he was a Johnny-come-lately who had scarcely wiped off the lipstick of his last state-side farewell. He wrote to May and to his mother, hinting strongly to May that her presence on the pier when the Caine pulled into San Francisco would be an overwhelmingly fine surprise (he omitted any such hint to his mother). He composed the letter to May in the clipping shack, crawling into his hole like an animal to enjoy his delight in dark solitude; and he took long pauses in the writing, with the ink caking on the nib of his fountain pen, while he stared at the paper and his mind rioted through Mohammedan fantasies.
A shadow fell across the page. Looking up, he saw Stilwell standing in the doorway. The sailor wore the immaculate dungarees and highly polished shoes in which he had appeared for trial at captain’s mast that morning, shortly before the arrival of the despatch.
“Yes, Stilwell?” said Willie sympathetically.
As officer of the deck Willie had recorded Stilwell’s sentence in the log: six months’ restriction to the ship. He had observed the mast ceremony on the quarterdeck with some