Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny

by The Caine Mutiny(Lit)

  Though Maryk glumly persisted in the search, the crew very quickly sensed that something had changed. The captain's dis-appearance and the perfunctory manner of the exec were soon reflected in an increasing slackness of the search party, officers and petty officers alike, and in bolder jokes and effron-tery from the sailors. By noon the search had dwindled to a shabby farce, embarrassing for the officers, and amusing to the men. The searchers were merely going through lazy mo-tions, like customs inspectors who had been bribed. At one o'clock Maryk called a halt, accepting tongue-in-cheek reports from all his subordinates that their parts in the search had been carried out. The rain had stopped, and the air was steamy and close. The exec went to the captain's cabin, and found the shades drawn, and Queeg naked in his bunk, wide awake. "Well, did you find it?" said Queeg.

  "No, sir."

  "Exactly as I predicted. Well, at least I gauged the caliber and loyalty of my subordinates correctly." The captain rolled over, his face to the bulkhead. "Kay. Get these keys out of here and return them."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you can pass the word around that if anybody thinks I'm licked they've got another think coming. I'll make my arrest in due time."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  The exec ordered some sailors to haul the cartons of keys out on the well deck. He summoned Willie Keith, Voles, and Farrington to redistribute them. The crew jammed the little space between the bridge and the galley deckhouse, laughing, yelling, and wrestling with each other, as the officers began the tedious job of unscrambling thousands of keys, calling off the names on the tags, and passing them out to the owners. A carnival of foolishness broke loose. Prim sailors on the Harte lined the rail, staring in astonishment at the mopping and mowing, and walking on hands, and obscene singing, and wild jigging of the Caine crew. Engstrand brought out his guitar to accompany such ditties as Roll Me Over in the Clover, Hi-ho Gafoozalum, The Bastard King of England, and The Man Who Shagged O'Reilly's Daughter. Meatball appeared, dressed in nothing but a pair of gigantic pink panties, from the waist of which there protruded a huge black key. The officers were too enmeshed in the tangled masses of keys to interfere with the boiling merriment. All this was taking place within a few feet of the captain's cabin. The hilarious sounds may have penetrated the dark, hot room; but there was no word of protest from Queeg.

  Maryk, meanwhile, had gone below to his room. He took off all his clothes, lit a long cigar, and brought the "medical log" out of his desk safe. Settling himself on his bunk, the folder propped on his knees, he began reading at the first page. The cigar was half smoked when he turned over the last sheet and put the log aside. He smoked away, staring at the green bulkhead, until the butt felt hot to his lips when he drew on it. He crushed it out, and pressed a buzzer beside his bed. Whit-taker appeared at the doorway in a moment. "Suh?"

  Maryk smiled wryly at the Negro's scared look. "Relax, Whittaker. I just want you to hunt up Mr. Keefer and ask him to come to my room if he's free."

  "Yes, suh." Whittaker grinned and ran off.

  "Close the door, Tom," said Maryk when the novelist ar-rived. "Not the curtain. The door."

  "Aye aye, Steve." Keefer slid the squeaking metal door shut.

  "Okay. Now, I've got something for you to read." Maryk handed over the folder. "Get comfortable, it's pretty long."

  Keefer sat in the chair. He glanced quizzically at the exec when he saw the first paragraphs. He read a couple of pages. "Jesus, even I'd forgotten some of this," he murmured.

  "Don't say anything till you've finished-"

  "So this is the mysterious novel you've been writing all these months, hey, Steve?"

  "You're the novelist, not me. Go ahead and read it."

  The gunnery officer read through the entire log. Maryk sat on his bunk, slowly rubbing his naked chest with his palms, watching the other's face. "Well, what do you think?" he said when Keefer put the folder down on the desk.

  "You've got him cold; Steve."

  "You think so?"

  "I congratulate you. It's a clinical picture of a paranoiac, a full case history, not a doubt in the world of it. You've got him, Steve. It's an amazing job you've done-"

  "Okay, Tom." Maryk swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, and leaned forward. "I'm ready to go up to Com Fifth Fleet here on the beach and turn in the skipper, under Article 184. Will you come with me?"

  Keefer drummed his fingers on the desk. He pulled a ciga-rette out of a pack in his breast pocket. "Sure you want me along?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Tom, I told you why long ago when we were alongside the Pluto. You're the one who knows psychiatry. If I start talking about it I'll make a goddamn idiot of myself and flub the whole thing-"

  "You don't have to talk. Your log does all the talking."

  "I'm going to be walking in on admirals, and they'll be calling in doctors, and I just can't present the thing myself. Anyway, I'm no writer. You think the log is enough. A hell of a lot is in the way a thing is written up, for an outsider. You know all these things happened, but when someone reads about them cold-I've got to have you along, Tom."

  There was a long silence. "The son of a bitch kept me from seeing my brother," Keefer said unsteadily. His eyes glared.

  "That's beside the point, Tom. If the old man's sick in the head there's nothing to be sore about."

  "True enough-I'll-I'm with you, Steve."

  "Okay, Tom." The exec jumped to the deck and offered his hand, looking up into Keefer's eyes. The squat barrel--chested fisherman and the slender writer clasped hands. "Bet-ter put on a fresh uniform if you've got one," Maryk said.

  Keefer looked down at his grease-smeared clothes, and smiled. "That's what happens when you go wriggling through magazines looking for a nonexistent key."

  Maryk was lathering his face when a radioman brought him a message. "TBS, sir. I knocked at the captain's door and looked in but he seemed to be fast asleep-"

  "I'll take it." The despatch read: All ships Apra Harbor prepare to get under way not later than 1700. Task units will steam southward and maneuver to avoid typhoon Charlie ap-proaching Guam. Wiping his face wearily with a damp towel, the exec took his phone from the wall bracket and buzzed the captain several times. Queeg answered at last, and sleepily told him to get the ship ready for sea.

  Keefer was in his underwear, shining his shoes when the exec came into his room and showed him the message. The novelist laughed and tossed. aside the shoebrush. "Reprieve."

  "Not for long. We do it first thing when we come back-"

  "Sure, Steve, sure. I'm with you. But I'm not looking for-ward to it-"

  "Neither am I."

  28

  A Visit to Halsey

  For two days the Caine steamed through rain, gusty winds, and ugly cross-swelling seas, in a motley company of ships which had bustled out of Apra Harbor. The typhoon blew by, a hundred fifty miles to the north. On the third morning the sea subsided, and a temperate wind blew a gray drizzle over the water. The ships separated into two groups, one returning to Guam, the other proceeding to Ulithi; the Caine went in the screen of the Ulithi group.

  Merely from the backwash of the storm, the old mine-sweeper and its crew had taken a miserable beating. The roll-ing and plunging had smashed dishes, chairs, bottles, and small instruments, had tumbled stores helter-skelter out of shelves in dirty heaps on the deck, had shipped water which sloshed about in the passageways, filthy brown, and had sprung leaks in many places of the rusty hull. Antennas were down, and a boat davit and both depth-charge racks were buckled. There had been no hot food for two days. The unwashed, hairy crew had slept for only minutes at a time in their gyrating bunks. Ulithi, sunny and green, its lagoon an azure mirror, looked like Paradise to the men of the Caine-on this particular arrival. They were accustomed to refer to it as a hole, with varying foul modifiers.

  "Halsey's here on the New Jersey," said Maryk in a low voice to Keefer, on the port wing, as the Caine steamed into Mugai Channel. "It's
flying Sopus and a four-star flag."

  Keefer peered through binoculars at the new gray battle-ship riding to a slack anchor chain near the channel entrance. "We're under Com Fifth, aren't we?" he whispered. "We missed our chance at Guam. If we go back, well-"

  Queeg, on the other wing, was shouting to the helm, "Steady as you go! I said steady, damn it! Don't run down that channel buoy!"

  The exec said, "Halsey's good enough for me. It's an emer-gency. We'll go over there as soon as we drop the hook-"

  "Mister Maryk," called Queeg, "if you'll be kind enough to give me my anchor bearings-"

  The two officers sat in the stern sheets of the gig, staring at the myriad gray jellyfish which pullulated under the shining surface of the lagoon. Keefer smoked. Maryk beat a tattoo on the brown leather portfolio containing the medical log. The gig chugged placidly down-channel toward the imposing New Jersey, two miles away. "Sun's too damn hot. Let's get under the canopy," said the novelist, flipping his cigarette into the water. "Just our luck," he went on in a low voice, when they were settled on the cracked leather cushions, screened from the gig crew by the noise of the motor, "that he's been so goddamned normal the past week."

  "Well, it's been that way right along," said the exec. "Some crazy thing, then a spell when he's okay, then something even crazier."

  "I know. Steve, d'you suppose there's a chance we'll get sent up to Halsey himself?"

  "I think maybe so. I don't think Article 184 comes up every day-"

  "I don't know how I'll like looking Halsey in the eye and telling him I've got a crazy captain."

  "I don't like the idea of it much myself."

  "Fact is, Steve, Old Yellowstain handled the ship fairly well in the storm, you must admit that. Far be it from me to defend him, but what's true is true-"

  "Listen, for a sick man he did fine," said the exec. "Only thing is, I never sleep good, waiting for him to go off his rocker again."

  "It's amazing," Keefer said, lighting another cigarette, "how cleverly these paranoids walk the narrow dividing line between outright lunacy and acts which can be logically explained. It's their distinguishing characteristic. In fact, once grant their basic premise, which may only be out of phase with reality by thirty degrees or so-not necessarily a hundred eighty de-grees-and everything they do becomes justifiable. Take Old Yellowstain. What is his basic premise? That everyone on the Caine is a liar, a traitor, and a funk-off, so that the ship can only function if he constantly nags and spies and threatens and screeches and hands out draconic punishments. Now, how do you go about proving that his premise is wrong?"

  "You couldn't ever prove it to him," said Maryk. "That's his sickness, isn't it? But any outsider knows that there's no ship with such a thoroughly no-good complement."

  "Well, let's hope an outsider named Halsey figures it that way."

  After a while Keefer said, "Take that log of yours. In-dividually, every one of those items could be justified by Queeg. Stopping the movies for six months? Why not? Con-tempt of the CO is one of the worst offenses in the Navy book. Raising hell about shirttails? Commendable strictness regard-ing uniforms, unusual in a minesweeper captain. The water famine? Wise prudence, perhaps a bit too conservative, but right within doctrine, to avoid a shortage. How do you prove he was really taking revenge on the crew for Rabbitt's escape? Luckily, when you add everything up, it becomes crystal-clear, but still-"

  Clang, clang! The gig slowed, and Meatball shouted, "Coming alongside New Jersey gangway, Mr. Maryk!"

  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 Meat-ball. 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 quarter-deck 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 name-plate, 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 com-manding the Caine-"