The Caine Mutiny (29 page)

One morning Willie stirred in his bunk, opened his eyes, and felt a strange and delicious sensation: the bunk was neither rolling nor pitching, but remaining level. He bounded out of the clipping shack in his underwear. The ship was gliding between the green banks of a channel about a mile wide. The sky was blue, the air cool and mild. The
Caine
moved as steadily as a ferryboat. Willie craned his neck out over the life lines and peered forward. Above the green round bulge of a hill he saw the piers of the Golden Gate Bridge, misty red, far inland. His eyes filled with tears; he dived back into the clipping shack.

He was on the bridge when the
Caine
steamed under the vaulting crimson span. But his poetic thoughts were jangled by a colloquy between the captain and Gorton, standing behind him.

“Kay, when we pass Alcatraz we’ll head over to Oakland. Give me a course, Burt.”

“Sir, Pier 91 isn’t in Oakland-”

“I know. We’re going to lie off Oakland for a while before we tie up at the pier.”

“But sir-”

“What the hell is all this arguing for, Burt? I want a course to Oakland!”

“Sir, I just wanted to say there’s a rugged tide current at Pier 91, five knots or better. It’s slack water now, we can make our landing easy. If we delay for an hour it’ll be a damn tough approach-”

“Let me worry about landing this ship. You give me a course to Oakland.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“
Mister
Keith. Are you doing anything besides sight-seeing?” Willie shriveled away from the bulkhead and faced the captain. Queeg, strangely dapper in a blue-and-gold bridge coat, white hat, and white silk scarf, was scanning the widening bay through binoculars. “No, sir-”

“Kay. That crate in my cabin-get yourself a working party and load it into the gig. You’ll be boat officer.”

At the expense of sundry mashed fingers, splinters under fingernails, crushed toes, and a spectacular fireworks of obscenity, the working party lodged the captain’s stone-heavy crate in the boat. Willie’s contribution was to stand well clear of the murderous box as it teetered in the air, and to make occasional mild suggestions which were totally ignored.

The
Caine
lay to near the Oakland shore, and the gig went puttering toward a concrete landing at the foot of a deserted street. Queeg sat in the stern sheets, his feet on the crate, rolling the balls and squinting around at the bay. Willie marveled at the crew of the gig. Horrible, Meatball, and Mackenzie were unrecognizable; washed, combed, shaved, powdered, dressed in starched whites, they seemed to be of a different race of man than the dismal savages who had first brought Willie to the
Caine
. He knew the reason for the Cinderella change, of course; the sailors wanted their leave, and were afraid of Queeg.

Once the motor died. The captain snapped irritably, after the sailors had fussed with the engine for a couple of minutes, “If this gig isn’t under way in thirty seconds someone’s going to be goddamn sorry.” Agonized thrashing of arms, and banging of wrenches, and sulphurous cursing ensued; and mercifully the motor started up again at the twenty-eighth second, and the gig reached the shore. “Kay,” said Queeg, leaping off the gunwale to the landing, “bear a hand with that crate. I’m late as hell.”

Two of the working party jumped to the dock, and the third sailor with Horrible and Meatball got one end of the crate tip over the gunwale with much heaving and grunting. The men on the dock seized the crate and pulled; those in the gig pushed from below. The box hardly moved.

“Well, well, what’s taking so long?”

“Sir, she won’t slide,” panted Horrible, his black hair falling over his eyes. “Too heavy.”

“Well, stand up on the gunwale and lift her then. Haven’t you any brains?” The captain looked around and saw Mackenzie standing on the dock with the bowline in his hand, staring vacantly at the struggle. “Well, what are you doing, standing there with your thumb in your bum and your mind in neutral? Bear a hand.”

Mackenzie at once dropped the line and jumped to help the men on the dock. This was a mistake on the part of captain and sailor alike. Mackenzie had been performing the necessary function of holding the gig close to the dock. With the bowline free, the gig fell away, imperceptibly at first and then faster. A crack of open water widened under the crate. “Oh Christ!” gasped Horrible, tottering on the gunwale, his fingers under one edge of the crate. “The bowline! Someone grab the bowline!” Mackenzie let go of the crate and rushed back to the rope. The men on the dock staggered. There was an instant of chaotic yelling, cursing, and crunching, over which rose the soprano scream of Queeg, “Watch out for that goddamn crate!”

Horrible and the crate fell into the water with a tremendous splash, soaking Queeg. Horrible floated, a blob of white on the muddy water. The crate went down like an anvil, with a bubbly groan. There was a moment of gruesome silence. Queeg, dripping, leaned over the edge of the landing and peered down into the brown water. “Kay,” he said. “Get out your grappling irons.”

Half an hour of grappling efforts followed. Queeg smoked up half a pack of cigarettes, taking only a few puffs each time and dashing the cigarettes into the water. Horrible crouched on the dock, his teeth chattering loudly.

“Sir,” said Meatball at last in a weak, small voice.

“Yes?”

“Sir, pardon me, I think she’s sunk in ooze. Even if we find her I don’t think we can bring her up. This line won’t take the strain, and anyway I think the grappling iron would just come splintering out of the wood. Pardon me, sir, but that’s what I think.”

Queeg stared at the water where the crate had vanished. “Kay. I think you’re right, at that. It’s just too goddamn bad.”

The gig was halfway back to the
Caine
before he spoke again. “Willie, who was in charge of that working party?”

“I-I guess I was, sir.”

“I guess you were, too. Well, then, how do you explain that fiasco?”

“Sir, I beg your pardon, you didn’t tell me to take charge of the unloading-”

“I don’t tell you to wipe your nose, either, Mr. Keith, when it needs it. There are certain things that an officer is assumed to understand for himself.” The captain stared out from under his eyebrows at nothing for several seconds and said, “I don’t appreciate a foul-up by a working party for which you’re responsible, Willie, especially when the foul-up costs me about a hundred and ten dollars.”

“Sir, that crate is in pretty close to shore, after all. I’m sure the harbor police can grapple for it and recover it, if you-”

“Are you out of your mind?” said the captain. “And have them ask me about the contents, hey? Sometimes you’re not so bright, Willie- Damn. Friend of mine up in Oakland would have taken that crate and shipped it back home for me- Well.” After a pause he added, “No, you’d just better think it over, Willie, and-well, just try to see where you bitched, things up, and what you’d better do about it.”

“Do you want me to submit a written report, sir?”

“Just think it over,” said Queeg irritably.

Seventy or eighty people, most of them women, were crowded on Pier 91 when the old minesweeper drew near. They fluttered handkerchiefs and uttered thin sweet cries, and in their brightly colored coats they made as decorative a welcoming display as rows of flags.

“Kay,” said Captain Queeg, posted on the port wing, squinting unhappily at the tide current swirling past the dock. “All engines slow to one third. Line-handling parties stand by the port side.”

Willie went to the starboard wing out of the captain’s sight, and began scanning the women on the wharf through binoculars. All over the ship sailors crowded the rails and life lines, trying to find familiar faces, shouting and waving.

The
Caine
, with its screws beating at five knots, drifted impotently sidewise, making no headway toward the dock against the current. “Kay,” said the captain, rolling the steel balls swiftly, “I can see this approach is going to be fun- Tell the line handlers to, stand by their line-throwing guns. All ahead two thirds! Right full rudder!”

The
Caine
churned forward against the brown tumbling tide, and swung in toward the pier. Gray gulls wheeled and darted between the ship and the dock, making raucous, jeering noises. In a few seconds the ship drew parallel to the dock-but yards and yards of open water lay between. “Kay, we’ll breast her in! All stop! Shoot those heaving lines over!”

The line-throwing guns cracked fore and aft, and the crowd cheered as two arcs of white cord came sailing across the water. The forward line reached the dock, but the after line splashed short. The
Caine
drifted away from the pier. “Christ, what’s the matter with that after line-handling party?” stormed Queeg. “Tell ’em to shoot over another line on the double!”

Gorton, standing at the captain’s elbow, said, “It’s not going to reach, sir. We’re drifting too fast-”

“
Why
are we drifting too fast? Because these goddamn line handlers are all goddamn zombies! Kay. Recover all lines! I’m going to make another approach.”

The
Caine
backed out into the main channel. Willie Keith’s heart gave a mighty throb, for he suddenly saw May Wynn at the far end of the pier, almost hidden by women in front of her. She wore a perky gray hat with a veil, a gray traveling suit, and a white fur shoulder piece. She looked as she had in Willie’s waking dreams, not a touch less beautiful or desirable. She was peering anxiously at the ship. Willie wanted to dance and scream, but he refrained, and merely took off the hat which made him a nameless naval officer. In a moment May’s eyes turned to him, and her face became brilliant with joy. She raised one white-gloved hand and waved. Willie returned the wave with a careless, masculine dip of the binoculars, but he became weak in the knees all the same, and prickles of pleasure ran along his skin.

“All right, we’ll try again,” he heard the captain shout, “and if there’s any more doping-off by the line-handling parties it’ll be too goddamn bad for a lot of people!”

Queeg tore in toward the dock at fifteen knots, swung the ship hard right, and backed the engines, in an apparent attempt to duplicate his historic red-hot landing alongside the fuel dock in Hawaii. But luck or skill did not favor him with the same hair-raising success this time. He backed down too late. The
Caine
came crashing into the wharf at an angle of about twenty degrees, still going fast. A hideous splintering din arose, mingled with shrieks of the lady spectators scurrying to the other side of the wharf.

“Back down emergency full! Emergency full!” squeaked the captain, as the destroyer, its bow imbedded in the dock, quivered like an arrow shot into a tree trunk. The
Caine
pulled clear in a moment, with more tearing and banging, leaving a monstrous shaving several feet thick and twenty yards long gouged out of the pier.

“God damn this current, why don’t they have a goddamn tug standing by when a ship has to go alongside?”

Willie shrank out of the captain’s sight, and flattened against the charthouse bulkhead, as he had often seen the signalmen do. With his girl almost within his grasp, and an infuriated captain loose, it was time to be invisible.

“Kay, we’ll try once more,” announced Queeg, as the old ship backed into open water, “and this time we’d better make it, for the sake of all hands, that’s all I’ve got to say!- All ahead two thirds!”

The
Caine
shuddered and started forward again.

“Right full rudder! All engines stop!”

Willie cautiously came up to the bulwark and saw that the
Caine
was slipping fairly into position alongside the dock, except that the bow was closer than the stern.

“Kay, let’s get that stern in now! Port back one third.”

“Port, sir?” said Jellybelly at the engine telegraph, in a surprised tone.

Queeg screamed, “Yes, port, and ring it up, God damn it! ... Kay! Get those lines over!”

Ensign Keith caught another good look at his sweetheart’s face. He was dizzy with love and longing.

“What the hell is the matter with that after line-handling party?” screeched Queeg, and on the instant came the pop of the line-throwing gun. But the current, and Queeg’s unfortunate mistake of backing the wrong screw, had swiveled the stern too far out, and the line fell into the water again. Meantime the men of the forecastle, with desperate speed, had gotten one manila line over to the dock, where the waiting sailors had secured it to a bollard. By this one tether the
Caine
now hung precariously, swinging out so that it was perpendicular to the wharf.

As the ship swung so, the starboard wing came in view of the dock again, and to Ensign Keith’s ears came a cry of a very familiar voice: “Will-EE! Will-EE darling!” His mother stood near the manila line, waving a handkerchief!

Queeg came bolting through the wheelhouse and almost knocked Willie down as he dashed for the rail. “Mr. Keith, get out from underfoot! Signalman, signalman, raise that tug!”