by Herman Wouk
The two officers scrambled out on the gunwale. The vast flat steel wall of the battleship’s side confronted them. It towered like a skyscraper and stretched away, seemingly for blocks, on either side, hiding the atoll. Maryk leaped to the landing platform, a small square wooden grille bleached by salt water at the bottom of the steep gangway ladder. Keefer followed. “Lie off and wait for us,” the exec shouted to Meatball. They mounted the ladder, jingling the guys chains. The OOD was a short, round-faced lieutenant commander, gray at the temples, wearing a very clean, very starched khakis. Maryk asked for the location of the flag office. The OOD briskly gave him directions. The Caine officers left the quarterdeck and walked slowly aft, looking around at the majestic main deck of the New Jersey.
It was another world; and yet, somehow, the same world as the Caine, transfigured. They were on a forecastle, with anchor chains, wildcat, pelican hooks, and bitts, with ventilators and life lines. But the New Jersey’s pelican hook was as big as the Caine’s main guns; one link of the battleship’s anchor chain would have stretched across the minesweeper’s entire bow; and the main battery, the long, long cannons with their turrets, seemed bigger than the whole Caine. There were sailors and officers everywhere, the same crowd of blue and sprinkling of khaki, but the sailors were clean as Sunday-school boys, and the officers looked like their teachers, grown up and fussily neat. The great central citadel of bridge and stacks jutted out of the deck skyward, a pyramid of metal, nervous with anti-aircraft batteries and radars; the deck dwindled aft beyond it for hundreds of feet. The New Jersey was awesome. “I guess we go in here,” said Maryk. “Third door, starboard side, under the twin five-inch-”
“Okay,” said Keefer, with a glance upward at the towering bridge in the brilliant sunlight.
They threaded through cool dim immaculate passageways. “Here we are,” said Maryk. The black plastic plate on the green door read Flag Lieutenant. He put his hand on the knob.
Keefer said, “Steve, maybe this isn’t the right place to start-”
“Well, they’ll give us a steer, here, anyhow.” He opened the door. There was nobody in the long, narrow, desk-filled room but a lone sailor in whites, reading a rainbow-colored comic magazine under the fluorescent lamp of a desk at the far end. “Where’s the flag lieutenant, sailor?” Maryk called.
“Chow,” said the sailor, not looking up.
“When will he be back?”
“Dunno.”
“What’s his room number?”
The yeoman glanced up with languid curiosity. He was white-faced, like most yeomen, and he could yawn as widely as a tiger, like most yeomen. He demonstrated this accomplishment for the benefit of the Caine officers, and then said grumpily, “What’s it about?”
“Official business.”
“Well, whatever it is, you can leave it with me. I’ll take care of it.”
“No, thanks. What’s his room number?”
“Three eighty-four,” said the yeoman, with another huge red yawn, and turned back to the comic magazine, adding, “But he don’t like nobody bothering him in his room. You won’t get no favors that way.”
“Thanks for the tip,” said Maryk, closing the door. He looked up and down the passageway and began to walk aft. “Which way do you suppose is 384?”
“Steve.”
“Yes?”
“I think we ought to talk a little bit.”
Maryk stopped, and looked back at Keefer. The novelist was not following him. He was leaning with his back against the flag lieutenant’s door.
“What about?”
“Let’s go out on deck.”
“We don’t have a lot of time-”
“Come on. I see daylight down at the other end there.” Keefer hurried along the passageway and Maryk trudged after him. Rounding a comer into a shaft of sunlight, the novelist almost ran into a marine in full-dress uniform guarding a green-curtained doorway. The marine executed a salute with his rifle, and stared ahead glassily. Over the doorway the nameplate, decorated with four silver stars, read, Admiral William F. Halsey, USN.
Maryk grabbed Keefer’s elbow. “Flag quarters! How about barging in and taking our chances? The hell with the chain of command. If he’s here he’ll listen to us-”
Keefer pulled his arm free. “Come on outside a minute.” He led the exec to the rail. They stood in the shadow of the citadel, looking out over the blue crowded lagoon. The breeze, blowing aft from the sunbaked forecastle, was hot and damp. “Steve,” said the novelist, “I’m getting cold on this deal.”
Maryk stared at him.
“You would be, too, if you had any imagination. Can’t you feel the difference between the New Jersey and the Caine? This is the Navy, here, the real Navy. Our ship is a floating booby hatch. Everybody’s Asiatic on the Caine, and you and I must be the worst of all, to think we could get away with pulling Article 184 on Queeg. Steve, they’ll ruin us. We haven’t got a chance. Let’s get out of here-”
“What the hell, Tom! I don’t understand you. What’s the New Jersey got to do with it? Is the captain nuts or isn’t he?”
“He’s nuts, of course he is, but-”
“Then what the hell is there to be afraid of? We’ve got to tell the highest available authority-”
“It won’t stick, Steve. We haven’t got enough on him. When this damn war is over I’m going to be a scribbler again, same as before. But you want to stay in the Navy, don’t you? You’ll smash yourself, Steve, against a stone wall. You’ll be finished in the Navy forever. And Queeg will go right on commanding the Caine-”
“Tom, you said yourself my log on Queeg nailed him down-”
“Sure, I thought so-on the Caine. It does, too. It would, for a competent psychiatrist. But we’ve got to tell it to the Navy, not a psychiatrist. That’s what I’m waking up to. Don’t you know the state of mind of these benighted bastards by now? Sure, they can conn ships, and fight, but their minds are back in the feudal system! What the hell does Halsey know or care about paranoia? He’ll think we’re a couple of goddamn mutinous reserves. Have you read those articles carefully? ‘Action under this article involves the most serious possibilities ...’ Mutiny, that’s what it involves-”
Maryk, squinting and scratching his head, said, “Well, I’m willing to take the chance. I can’t go on steaming around with a skipper who I think is crazy-”
“That’s by your standards. By Navy standards, for all you know, he’s still a commendable disciplinarian-”
“Oh, Jesus, Tom. Turning the ship upside down for a key that never existed-cutting off the water for days at the equator-running away from shore batteries-”
“All those things can be taken two ways. Steve, for Christ’s sake listen to me and wait. Maybe in a week or two he’ll go absolutely ga-ga. If he starts galloping around the decks naked or seeing ghosts or something we’ve really got him-and it can happen any time-”
“I think we’ve got him now-”
“I don’t. I’ve changed my mind, Steve. If you think I’m crawfishing, I’m sorry. I’m really doing you the greatest favor of your life.”
“Tom, let’s go and try to see Halsey-”
“I won’t go with you, Steve. You’ll have to do it alone.”
Maryk wet his lips, and grimaced at Keefer for a long moment. The novelist faced him, his jaw muscles trembling slightly. “Tom,” said Maryk, “you’re scared, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Keefer, “I’m scared.”
The exec shrugged, and puffed out his cheeks. “You should have said so sooner. I can understand getting scared- Well, let’s call away the gig.” He started to walk forward.
“I would like you to admit,” said the novelist, hurrying to his side, “that at this point the wise and logical reaction is to get intelligently scared. Sometimes getting scared and beating it the hell away is the correct solution of a-”
“Okay, Tom. Let it go at that.”
“We started out to do a rash and disastrous thing. We bac
ked off in time. There’s nothing wrong with that. We should be glad of it-”
“Don’t say ‘we.’ I’m still ready to go through with it-”
“Well, Christ,” Keefer said angrily, “go ahead and hang yourself, then.”
“I can’t do the thing alone.”
“That’s a stall. You’ve been pulling it right along. I’m frank enough to admit I’m scared, that’s the difference between us-”
Maryk stopped walking. He said mildly, “Listen, Tom. All this was your idea from the start. I never knew the word ‘paranoia’ until you pulled it on me. I’m still not sure what the hell it means. But I think now you’re probably right about the skipper going sick in the head. I think it’s wrong for us to keep quiet about it. Your trouble is, you want to back down when the going looks tough, and you also want me to congratulate you for doing it. You can’t have it both ways, Tom. That’s like Queeg.”
Keefer bit his lower lip and said with a twisted smile, “Them’s harsh words-”
“I see the gig,” said Maryk, going to the rail and semaphoring with both arms. “Let’s get back to the Caine.”
CHAPTER 29
The Typhoon
Giant after giant after giant, the new battleships and carriers were ranked in Ulithi Lagoon, an orderly multitude of floating iron skyscrapers, incongruously bordered by a delicate ring of palm trees. The Navy had gathered its main striking power in the atoll for the assault on Luzon; and it was the most formidable sea force that the planet has ever borne. Willie Keith sat for hours on the forecastle of the runty, rusty Caine, printing the marvel of this task force on his memory. The array thrilled him, dulled as he was by now to the sights of the war. All the brute energy of human history seemed to him to be concentrated and made visible in Ulithi. He remembered walking along Riverside Drive in peacetime when the fleet was in, and philosophizing-it was during his sophomore year-to the effect that warships were merely big toys, and that national minds were child’s minds, so that nations judged each other by the number and size of each other’s toys. Since then he had seen the toys in action, settling the issues of life and death, and freedom and slavery, for his time; and he had swung so far away from his undergraduate wisdom that he now regarded the Navy’s big ships with reverent awe.
And in so regarding them, he was still only an older sort of sophomore; because what was Ulithi, after all? A tiny enclosure of coral in the empty, empty ocean. A ship sailing within ten miles of it wouldn’t even have seen it; and all the great Third Fleet, sinking at once, would not have raised the level of the sea by a thousandth of the breadth of a hair. The world’s arena remains, to this hour, somewhat too big for the most ambitious human contrivances. The fact is, a typhoon, just one little racing whirlpool of air in one insignificant corner of the ocean, can be too big.
Maryk was in the charthouse, plotting typhoon warnings on the large Pacific chart from a file of despatches giving latitudes and longitudes of storm centers. Willie wandered in and stood looking over his shoulder. “Steve, d’you suppose I could sort of assistant-navigate one of these days?”
“Hell, yes.” Maryk at once -handed over the dividers and parallel rulers. “You can start right now plotting these storm positions.”
“Thanks.” Willie began pricking in the locations neatly, marking them with little red squares.
“When we go out this morning you shoot the sun lines,” said the exec. “Engstrand will punch the stop watch. If we don’t make it back by nightfall you can work out star sights and check your posit against mine.”
“Okay. I’ve shot a few sun lines, last couple of weeks, just for the fun of it.”
“Willie, you’re asking for trouble.” The exec grinned. “Don’t you have enough collateral duties?”
“Oh, sure. But the old man will just keep me decoding till I rot. Laundry and morale and ship’s service are all very well, but-ocean’s crawling with typhoons.”
“Well, this time of year-”
Maryk lit a cigar and went out on the wing. He leaned his elbows on the bulwark, enjoying the contentment of unexpected relief from a trivial chore. He knew Willie Keith would plot the warnings reliably. The pressure from below of a junior officer soberly reaching for more responsibility gave the executive officer a pleasant sense of the fruitfulness of time. He remembered Willie as he had been in his first days on the Caine, a baby-faced, flip ensign, callow and careless, pouting at Captain de Vriess like a spanked child. “De Vriess had Willie’s number, though,” Maryk thought. “He told me right off he would be okay after his behind had been kicked bloody.”
Willie appeared beside him. “All plotted.”
“Very well.” Maryk puffed at his cigar.
The communications officer leaned on the bulwark, looking out at the anchorage. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” he said. “I never get tired of looking at it. That’s power.”
Next morning the big ships steamed out to sea. The Caine tagged along, dragging its target, and for a merry day and night the Third Fleet, division by division, took turns at gunfire practice while advancing westward. Then the minesweeper turned back with its tattered burden, and the task force went on to strike at the airfields of the Philippines. Ulithi looked deserted and shabby when the Caine returned; a reviewing stand after the parade, a ballroom after the ball. Only the service ships were left-oilers, minesweepers, and some concrete supply barges, and the ever-present ugly landing craft. Jellyfish were battening on the drifting garbage of the great ships that were gone.
Down splashed the anchor, and dull days went by, while Willie followed the exploits of Halsey’s force in the Fox schedule despatches. His only other diversion was keeping up the typhoon chart.
Willie had been in some of the dirty weather which swirls around the edges of typhoons, but he had never steamed through one. His picture of these whirlwinds was therefore a mingling of half-remembered pages of Conrad and some recently studied sections of the American Practical Navigator. On the one hand he retained the immortal image of the squeaking Chinese passengers rolling from one end of a black hold to another in a single fluid lump, accompanied by loose bouncing, clinking silver dollars. On the other hand he knew that typhoons started as a result of a collision of warm air and cold air: the warm air rose like a bubble in a tub, the cold air rushed into the resulting void, a twist was imparted to the path of the cold air by the earth’s rotation, and so you had a rotating windstorm. He wasn’t exactly sure why they rotated in opposite directions north and south of the equator; nor why they mostly happened in the fall; nor why they moved northwest in a parabolic path. But he had noticed that the account in the American Practical Navigator closed with an apologetic muttering to the effect that certain aspects of typhoons had never been satisfactorily explained. This gave him an excuse not to bother his head about the scientific account too much. He memorized the methods for locating the direction and distance of the center, and the rules of seamanship for the left and right semicircles; and these he puzzled through until he saw the logic of them. Thereafter he considered himself an informed mariner on the subject.
He knew, in fact, almost as much as one can know about typhoons without having been through one. It was as much as an innocent divinity student, feeling obliged to learn something about sin in order to fight it, might find out by reading Ulysses and the poems of Baudelaire.
The monotony was broken by an action despatch flashed to the Caine one afternoon from the beach: not a target-towing order, but a screening assignment with tankers which were to rendezvous with the Third Fleet for refueling at sea. The prospect of quasi-combat service stirred up some gaiety in the languid crew. The officers, too, perked up. They indulged in hideous part-singing that night after dinner, concluding with the sailors’ hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save; wherein especially cacophonous harmonies were bawled on the last lines,
“O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.”
The ocean was calm, the sky clear, and the s
un bright when the tanker group stood out from Mugai Channel. The Caine’s station was at the extreme right of the screen, five thousand yards from the guide. The zigzag plan was an old familiar one. The squat fat tankers plowed placidly along, and the destroyers rolled in the van, probing under the sea with long fingers of sound. The patterns and precautions of war were as customary to the seafarers of this task group as fireside habits. It was a voyage of sleepy dullness.
Willie Keith’s typhoon chart was empty of red squares in all the blue space between Ulithi and the Philippines. He assumed, therefore, that there were in fact no typhoons in those waters, and went about his chores in quietness of spirit. However, as Captain Queeg had often pointed out, you can’t assume a goddamn thing in the Navy. Not, at least, where typhoons are concerned.
On the night of December 16 the Caine began to roll pretty hard. There was nothing unusual in that. Willie had often clung swaying to a stanchion while the inclinometer on the bridge dipped to forty-five degrees, and green white-capped seas filled the view through the side windows. He was reading The Old Curiosity Shop in his room. After a while he felt the slight headache that preceded nausea when he read in too-rough weather. He wedged the book into a shelf and went to bed; bracing his body with knees and soles so that the motion hardly disturbed him.
He was shaken out of sleep by the boatswain’s mate. As always, his eyes sought his watch. “What the hell-it’s only two-thirty-”
“Captain wants to see you on the bridge, sir.”
This was slightly strange. Not the summons; Queeg called Willie out of his sleep two or three nights each week to discuss some point of accounting or decoding; but as a rule he was in his cabin. Hanging onto the upper bunk with one hand as he pulled on trousers, Willie sleepily reviewed in his mind the accounts he had recently audited. He decided that the laundry statement was probably at issue this time. He staggered topside, wondering whether the rolling was really as steep as it seemed. The wind, wet and warm, was on the starboard quarter, stiff enough to be whining through the life lines and guy wires. Black ragged seas climbed toward the sky with each roll. There were no stars.
