by Herman Wouk
Glances of puzzlement traveled around the table. Gorton cleared his throat. “Ha-hem. Captain, an ensign named Ferguson had that as collateral duty last I knew. It seems to me it was never reassigned when he got detached-”
Queeg shook his head slowly, and rasped the balls in silence for several moments. “Kay,” he said. “Mr. Keith, as of now, you’re the morale officer, in addition to your other duties.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Your first task is to see to it that every man on this ship begins to tuck his shirttail inside his pants.”
Willie looked startled.
“I don’t want to see a flapping shirttail again while I’m captain of this ship, I don’t care what steps you take. You can be as tough as you please. I’ll back you to the limit. If we want these men to start acting like sailors we’ve got to make them start looking like sailors. Woe betide the officer during whose watch I see a sailor with a flapping shirttail-and woe betide that sailor’s department head-and woe betide the morale officer. I kid you not.
“Well, gentlemen, that concludes my business, and, as I say, let’s get excellent performance established as the standard around here, and-and has anybody got any comment to make? No? You, Gorton? You, Maryk? You, Adams? ...” In this way he went around the table, darting a forefinger at each officer. They shook their heads, one after another. “Fine. In that case I can assume that you all fully understand and enthusiastically support what I’ve said today, is that correct? And-well, that’s all I have to say, and-and remember that we are now running the best goddamn target-towing ship in the Navy, and-and let’s get on with the ship’s business.”
All the officers rose for the ceremony of the captain’s withdrawal. “Kay, kay, thank you,” he said, and hurried off into his room.
During the next two weeks, the “best goddamn target-towing ship in the Navy” carried out several towing assignments without mishap.
Queeg’s ship handling underwent a striking change after the brush with ComServPac. His dashing first manner disappeared, replaced by painful inching toward a dock or away from it. The exaggerated caution fretted the nerves of the crew, who were used to De Vriess’s spirited ease and accuracy. But there were no crashings or groundings.
Willie Keith posted a long notice in the crew’s quarters, headed: Morale-Smart Seamanlike Appearance as an Improver of. In five paragraphs of rolling prose he asked the crew to tuck in their shirttails. Much to his amazement, he was obeyed; the flapping tails vanished. He read his notice over and over, in a proud agony of authorship, and decided that he had a literary gift which could move men’s souls. This was optimistic. The crew, wise as wolves, knew perfectly well where the order came from. They were walking softly with their new captain. For the Caine had fallen on fat days; a stretch of Pearl Harbor duty was the dream of all the destroyer sailors in the Pacific. It meant fresh fruit in the pantry, and milk, and cream, and steaks, and revelry by night in the bars and byways of Honolulu. Nobody wanted to be restricted to the ship for the small luxury of a hanging shirttail.
The trouble started one morning when there was a fog. Captain Queeg came on the bridge at dawn and saw nothing but a blue blur, dimly relieved by yellow blotches of lamps on the dock. The air was muggy and smelled of mildew. “The hell with this,” the captain snorted. “Secure special sea details. We’ll get under way when this mess is gone. The sun’ll dry it up.”
But the blue turned light gray, then a drizzly white, and the channel echoed with the mournful, irritated hoots of foghorns, and the clock stood at 0815. From the bridge, the cranes on the fantail could barely be seen; beyond that was blank whiteness. Captain Queeg had been pacing the bridge for an hour, muttering. “Stand by to get under way,” he snapped at last.
Sounding fog signals, with the engines at dead slow, the Caine backed out into the channel. The dock was swallowed in drifting mist. The blind ship floated in a steamy void, rocking, and around it the foghorns suddenly seemed louder. They bawled and screeched from every direction, as hard to place as crickets in a dark cellar. Queeg ran from wing to wing, straining his eyes at the dripping blank windows and at the tumbling mists astern. His jaw was slack; his lips trembled. “Get out of my way, God damn it,” he yelled at Willie on the port wing, and the ensign leaped backward.
All at once a blast shattered the air, a tremendous foghorn apparently right on top of the Caine. Willie bit his tongue in sudden fright. Queeg came racing past him, bawling, “All engines stop! Who sees it! Where is it? Doesn’t anybody see anything?” He ran past Willie again and again, circling the bridge in frenzy four times, stopping each time for an instant in the wheelhouse to yank the foghorn cord. Again the big horn blasted, and a monstrous shadowy shape, a tanker, loomed through the fog, slipped past the Caine’s stern, and disappeared.
“Whew!” said Queeg, arresting his orbit beside Willie. He went to the charthouse door. “Navigator, how about giving me a course here? What the hell is the holdup?”
Gorton looked up from his chart in surprise. The course from this point was 220 degrees straight to the target base. Captain Queeg knew it as well as he. “Aye aye, sir, I-”
“What do you mean, aye aye, sir? What’s the course?” squeaked the captain, pounding his fist against the iron bulkhead.
Gorton stared at him. “Sir, I didn’t think you wanted a course until we turned around-”
“Turned around?” exclaimed Queeg. He glared at Gorton for a moment, then rushed into the pilothouse and issued the engine and rudder orders to turn the ship around. In a moment the minesweeper began to shudder as its screws pounded in opposite directions. The circle of gleaming green numbers on the black face of the gyroscope compass ticked steadily counterclockwise and the heading increased: 95 degrees, 100, 105, 120, 150. Queeg watched the compass intently for a few moments. Then he said to the helmsman, “Call out every twenty degrees of course change,” and ran out on the wing. Maryk, with both hands gripping the bulwark, was squinting out into the mist. The water was visible now around the ship for a couple of hundred yards, and overhead the whiteness had become dazzling.
“I think she’s breaking up, sir,” said the first lieutenant.
“About time,” growled Queeg, panting a little.
“Heading 180,” called the helmsman, a gunner’s mate second class named Stilwell. He was tall, and had thick straight black hair and sensitive boyish features. He gripped the wheel and stood with his legs apart, eyes fixed on the gyrocompass.
“I guess maybe we’ll get out of here today yet,” said Queeg. He called to the navigator’s shack, “What’s the course to the gate, Tom, 220?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Heading 200,” called the helmsman.
The foghorn blasts were diminishing in number, and stretches of black water could now be seen around the ship. “Bet she’s clear up at the channel entrance already,” said Maryk.
The helmsman called, “Steadying up on 220, sir.”
“WHAT?” yelled Queeg. He dived into the pilothouse. “Who gave you the order to steady up?”
“Sir, I thought-”
“You thought! You thought! You’re not being paid to think!” the captain screeched. “You just do as you’re goddamn told and don’t go thinking-please!”
The helmsman’s legs were trembling. His face was white and his eyes seemed to be popping from his head. “Aye aye, sir,” he gasped. “Shall I come left again-”
“Don’t do ANYTHING!” Queeg screamed. “What course are you on?”
“Tu-tu-two-two-five, sir, coming right-”
“I thought you steadied on 220-”
“I stopped steadying, sir, when you said-”
“For Christ’s sake will you stop telling me what I said? Now, you come left and steady on 220!! Is that clear?”
“Aye aye, sir, l-left and steady on 220.”
“Mr. Maryk!” shouted the captain. The first lieutenant came running into the wheelhouse. “What’s this man’s name and rating?”
&nb
sp; “Stilwell, sir, gunner’s mate second-”
“If he doesn’t watch himself he’ll be seaman second. I want him relieved and I want an experienced man at this wheel hereafter when we’re in the channel, not a green stupid idiot-”
“He’s our best helmsman, sir-”
“I want him relieved, do you hear-”
Willie Keith put his head in. “Something, looks like a battleship, dead ahead, Captain, three hundred yards!”
Queeg looked up in horror. A vast dark bulk was bearing down on the Caine. Queeg opened and closed his mouth three times without uttering a sound, then he choked out, “All engines back full-bah-bah-belay that-All stop.”
The order had barely been countermanded when the battleship slipped down the starboard side of the Caine, hooting angrily with perhaps ten feet of open water between the hulls. It was like a steel cliff going by.
“Red channel buoy, one point port bow,” called down a lookout from the flying bridge.
“No wonder,” said Maryk to the captain. “We’re on the wrong side of the channel, sir.”
“We’re not on the wrong side of anything,” snapped the captain. “If you’ll tend to your business and get another helmsman, I’ll tend to my business and conn my ship, Mr. Maryk!”
The Caine suddenly drifted through a gray curtain into sparkling sunshine and green water. The way was clear to the target repair base, in plain view about half a mile down-channel. The fog lay on the channel astern like a pile of cotton.
“Kay,” said Queeg. “All engines ahead one third.” He reached a shaking hand into his trousers and brought out the two steel balls.
The atmosphere on the bridge remained unpleasant long after the shore sank from sight and the Caine was steaming peacefully over calm blue water. It was the first time the new captain had burst out against a sailor; and it was the first time in the memory of anyone aboard the Caine that a helmsman had been summarily relieved. It wasn’t even clear to the crew what Stilwell had done wrong.
Willie, relieved of the watch when the ship left the channel, went to the clipping shack and told Harding the story. “I may be crazy. I hope I am,” he said. “It seemed to me that the captain just lost his head in the fog, and got scared, and took out his scare on the handiest sailor.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Harding from directly beneath him, lying back and smoking. “A helmsman isn’t supposed to steady up without an order.”
“But he knew the captain wanted course 220. He heard him say so to the navigator. Isn’t a sailor ever supposed to use his head?”
“Willie, it takes time to get used to a new captain’s ways, that’s all.”
The delicate question arose, when Stilwell’s turn came to relieve the wheel that afternoon, whether he had been banished perpetually from the bridge, or merely dismissed from his post for that one time. He asked his chief petty officer; the chief asked Lieutenant Adams; Adams asked Gorton; and Gorton reluctantly decided that he would have to ask Queeg.
The Caine at that time was steaming placidly on a straight course, the target trailing in its wake a mile behind, and on the horizon to starboard a division of destroyers was deploying into position for the last firing run of the afternoon. Gorton approached the captain and asked him about Stilwell. Queeg laughed pleasantly and said, “Hell, of course let him stand his watch. I’ve got nothing against the boy, he seems like a clean-cut sailor. Anybody can make a mistake. Just tell him not to go doing things to the helm without orders.”
Stilwell came up to the bridge at a quarter to four dressed in brand-new dungarees and a newly bleached white hat. He was freshly shaved and his shoes were shined. He saluted the captain smartly. “Ah, good afternoon, good afternoon, Stilwell,” said Queeg with a smile. The gunner’s mate took the wheel, and studied the compass with painful concentration, trying to keep the ship from drifting even half a degree off course.
Over the TBS, the short-wave speaker in the wheelhouse, the squadron leader of the destroyers spoke up: “Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn, this is Tarzan. Ready to commence final run. Out.”
“Two-block Baker!” called the captain.
The signalman ran the red flag to the yardarm. Yellow flashes appeared all along the leading destroyer. Splashes shot up near the target as the boom of the five-inch guns came rolling over four miles of water. Again and again came the salvos, and then the second ship in line began firing.
Willie Keith was lolling on the fantail with his shirt off, enjoying the show and acquiring a sunburn. His lazy thoughts were of May Wynn, of walks through snow and rain along Broadway, of long languorous kisses in taxicabs-
“Ensign Keith, report to the bridge on the double!”
When a note of emotion managed to filter through the public-address system, as it did in this strident announcement, the effect was frightening. Willie jumped to his feet, put on his shirt, and scuttled up the main deck. A horrid sight confronted him on the bridge. The little moon-faced signalman, Urban, stood at cataleptic attention, his face frozen in lines of fear. His shirttail hung outside his pants. On one side of him stood the captain, glowering out to sea and rolling the balls. On the other side was Keefer, nervously twisting the lenses of his OOD binoculars.
“Ah, the morale officer,” said Queeg, turning sharply as Willie approached. “Mr. Keith, have you any explanation for the appearance of this sailor?”
“Sir-I-I didn’t know-” Willie turned on the signalman. “Didn’t you read my notice?” he said as fiercely as he could.
“Ye-yes, sir. I just forgot, sir. I’m sorry, sir-”
“Well, damn it,” said Willie, “the least you can do is tuck in your damned shirttail now!”
“Sir, the captain won’t let me,” bleated Urban.
Willie glanced at the captain. “Of course not,” said Queeg irritably. “First I wanted you to see what a lousy job you were doing, Ensign Keith, and-”
“Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn, this is Tarzan,” came from the wheelhouse. Queeg ran inside and seized the receiver.
“This is Gwendolyn. Go ahead.”
“Gwendolyn, cease present exercise and return to base. Well done. Out.”
“Roger, thank you, out,” said Queeg. He turned to the helmsman. “Right standard rudder.”
“Right standard rudder, sir,” said Stilwell, with a glance at the captain that showed all the white of his eyes. He spun the wheel hard.
The captain went out to the starboard wing. “Kay. Now, first of all, Keith, do you or don’t you have an explanation for this?”
“Sir, I was on the fantail, and-”
“I didn’t ask for an alibi! I’m talking about your failure to carry out my orders, and impress this ship’s crew with my desires regarding uniforms!”
The Caine, responding to the helm, swung around in a wide arc to the right. The target and towline, lagging behind on the turn, drifted up the starboard side.
“Kay,” said Queeg, “you will submit a written report, Mr. Keith, explaining this failure.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Now then, Mr. Keefer,” said the captain, wheeling on the officer of the deck, who was watching the target. “Have you any explanation for the fact that the first man to violate my uniform orders is in your department?”
“Sir, there are limits to what a department head can do while he has the deck-”
“Well, there are no limits,” shrilled Queeg, “to the duties of the officer of the deck! He is responsible for every goddamned thing that happens aboard ship during his watch, every goddamned thing!”
The ship was swinging in a circular path. The target and towline were well forward of the beam. The helmsman was staring at the target, his mouth gaping. The turning diameter of the Caine was a thousand yards, and the towline was twice that long; it was therefore obvious to Stilwell that at the present rate the ship was going to cut far inside the target, and pass over its own towline. Ordinarily he would have called this fact to the captain’s attention; but today he would have bitten his t
ongue out before speaking. He held the helm at right standard rudder.
“Kay, Mr. Keefer,” Queeg was saying, “you will submit a written report explaining (a) why this man’s shirt was out when he is in your department and (b) why this man’s shirttail was out when you had the deck. Is that clear?” (The target was now drifting across the bow.)
“Aye aye, sir.”
Chiefs Budge and Bellison were sitting on a ventilator on the forecastle, enjoying a smoke in the salt breeze. Bellison suddenly dug a bony elbow into the water tender’s fat ribs. “Budge, am I seeing straight? Are we cutting back across the towline?”
Chief Budge stared out at the target, then looked wildly at the bridge, then catapulted his heavy body to the life lines, and peered over the side at the water. “Christ, yes. What’s the matter with the old man?”
Bellison said, “Should I yell?”
“It’s too late. We can’t stop any more-”
“Jesus, the screws, Budge-suppose that tow cable wraps around the screws-”
The chiefs held their breath and clung to the life lines, fearfully watching the bobbing target, far on the port beam. The Caine majestically steamed over its own tow cable. There was a slight jar, no more, and the old ship continued on its way. Nothing, apparently, happened to the target.
“The two chiefs turned to each other. Bellison uncorked a flood of horrible profanity, which, translated, meant, “This is extremely unusual.” They stared at the sea and the ship’s curving wake for a long while, half stunned. “Budge,” said Bellison at last in a low, shaken tone, “I’m an unholy son of a bitch. This ship has gone around a full circle, and is starting around again!”
Budge, his stomach resting heavily on the life line, nodded in wonder. On the sea the ship’s wake was a complete circle of smooth green water flecked with bubbles, a mile across. The Caine was plowing into the same track again, still heeled over by the rudder. “What the Christ are we steaming in circles for?” said Bellison.
