The Caine Mutiny (36 page)

The boat officer waved the megaphone once, and crouched low in the boat as it began to churn forward again. His little landing craft was only fifty yards from the side of the
Caine
now. It was an LVT, one of the numerous land-and-water monsters evolved in World War II; a small metal boat incongruously fitted with caterpillar tracks. It could waddle on land or wallow through the sea for short distances, and though it could perform neither feat well, it existed because it could do both at all. Willie pitied the drenched men in the little craft, which pitched and rolled on the open sea like a toy.

Maryk steered for the atoll. There was nothing between the
Caine
and the Japanese island of Enneubing (which the Navy had nicknamed “Jacob”) but a few thousand yards of choppy water with whitecaps. Willie could see details on the beach now: a hut, an abandoned rowboat, oil drums, shattered palm trees. He thought he had never seen a green so deep and rich as the green of Jacob Island, nor a white so white as its sands. There were two pretty orange fires on it, showing above the treetops; and not a movement of life anywhere. He looked around at the string of LVT’s bobbing behind, and noticed a sailor in the lead boat frantically waving semaphore flags. The ensign signaled with his arms, “Go ahead.” The flags rapidly spelled out, C-H-R-I-S-T S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Several times the sailor fell off his signaling perch as the LVT dived into foaming troughs. Curtains of spray were dousing the attack boats every few seconds.

Queeg came around the bridgehouse and scurried up to Willie. “Well, well, what is it?” he said impatiently, and “What the hell do they want?” and “Well, can you read it or can’t you?”

“They want us to slow down, Captain.”

“That’s too goddamn bad. We’re supposed to be on the line of departure at H-hour. If they can’t keep up with us we’ll throw over a dye marker when we reach the spot, and that’ll have to do.” Queeg squinted at the island, and ran into the pilothouse. “Jesus, Steve, do you want to run up on the beach?”

“No, sir. About fifteen hundred yards to go to the line of departure.”

“
Fifteen hundred
? You’re crazy! The
beach
isn’t fifteen hundred yards away-”

“Captain, the cutoff tangent on Roi Island is 045. Tangent now is 065.”

Urban, at the port alidade, called out, “Left tangent Roi, 064.”

The captain darted out on the port wing and pushed the little signalman aside. “You must be blind.” He put his eye to the alidade. “I thought so! Zero
five
four and that’s allowing nothing for set and drift along the line of bearing. We’re inside the departure point now. Right full rudder! Right full rudder!” he shouted. “All engines ahead full! Throw over a dye marker!”

The stacks puffed billows of black smoke. The
Caine
heeled sharply to starboard and scored a tight white semicircle on the sea as it sped. around on the reverse course. Within a minute the LVT’s of Jacob Group Four were a line of bobbing specks far astern. Near them on the sea was a spreading stain of bright yellow.

Later in the day, however, the
Caine
steamed bravely through the channel between Jacob and Ivan, together with a hundred other ships of the attack force. The American flag was flying on both islands. The
Caine
dropped anchor in the lagoon. Queeg ordered the posting of armed guards all along the sides of the ship to shoot any stray Japanese swimmers, and dismissed the crew from battle stations. There was nothing else to do. Hemmed in by transports, cargo ships, and destroyers, the
Caine
couldn’t have fired at the beach even if ordered to. The grateful sailors left their gun posts, where they had been lolling for fourteen hours, and most of them went below at once to sleep. Sensitive as cats to the likelihood of danger, they knew that none threatened any more at Kwajalein. Willie’s eyes stung with sleepiness, too, but he went up to the flying bridge to watch the show.

It was a queer battle, the fight for Kwajalein, to be a young man’s initiation into warfare. Possibly it was the queerest that has ever been fought. It had been won thousands of miles away, months before a shot was fired. The admirals had guessed correctly that the Mikado’s “unsinkable carriers” were short of an important commodity: planes. Too many Japanese aircraft had been clawed out of the sky in the broils around the Solomons. As for warships, the remaining ones had become precious to the empire; and frugally guarded weapons are no weapons at all. With the mere arrival of the American array of ships and men, the battle was theoretically over. There was nothing at Kwajalein but a few thousand Japanese soldiers to face the monstrous fleet rising out of the sea; they were blasted into utter impotence in a few hours by an avalanche of bombs and shells. A white flag should have flown from each island at sunrise, by all the logic of war. Since the Japs appeared illogically unwilling to surrender, the naval bombarders set about annihilating them with an oddly good-humored, ribald ferocity.

Willie enjoyed and applauded the spectacle with no thought of its fatality. Under a garish pink-and-blue sunset, the bombardment was taking on the air of Mardi Gras. The green islands were blazing in wide red splotches now. Pretty crimson dotted lines of tracer bullets laced across the purple waters; the gouts of flame at the big guns’ muzzles grew brighter and yellower in the twilight, and concussions regularly shook the atmosphere, while the smell of powder hung everywhere, strangely mingled, in the puffs of the breeze, with the spicy sweetness of crushed and burning tropic foliage. Willie leaned on the bulwark of the flying bridge, his life jacket dumped at his feet, his helmet pushed back from his damp forehead; and he smoked, and whistled Cole Porter tunes, and occasionally yawned, a tired but thoroughly entertained spectator.

This cold-bloodedness, worthy of a horseman of Genghis Khan, was quite strange in a pleasant little fellow like Ensign Keith. Militarily, of course, it was an asset beyond price. Like most of the naval executioners at Kwajalein, he seemed to regard the enemy as a species of animal pest. From the grim and desperate taciturnity with which the Japanese died, they seemed on their side to believe they were contending with an invasion of large armed ants. This obliviousness on both sides to the fact that the opponents were human beings may perhaps be cited as the key to the many massacres of the Pacific war. The Kwajalein invasion, the first of these, was a grand classic of sea warfare, a lesson for the generations. There has never been a more wisely conceived and surgically executed operation. As a young man’s first taste of war, however, it was too rich, too easy, too fancy, too perfect.

Whittaker poked his head over the top of the ladder to the flying bridge, and said, “Chadan, Mistuh Keith.” Stars were already winking in the sky. Willie went below, and fell to with the other officers on an excellent steak dinner. When the table was cleared, Willie, Keefer, Maryk, and Harding remained around the green baize, drinking coffee.

“Well,” said Keefer to Maryk, lighting a cigarette, “what did you think of the performance of Old Yellowstain today?”

“Knock it off, Tom.”

“That was something, wasn’t it, turning tail before we ever got to the line of departure and leaving those poor slobs in the LVT’s to navigate for themselves?”

“Tom, you weren’t even on the bridge,” said the executive officer shortly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was on the flying bridge, Steve, old boy, seeing and hearing everything.”

“We dropped a marker. They knew just where they were-”

“We dropped when the cutoff bearing was out almost twenty degrees-”

“Ten degrees. The captain read fifty-four, not sixty-four-”

“Oh, you believed that?”

“-and our advance while turning carried us another six or seven hundred yards. The dye marker was probably right on.” Keefer turned on Willie suddenly. “What do
you
say? Did we funk off like a scared rabbit or didn’t we?”

Willie hesitated for several seconds. “Well, I wasn’t on the alidade. Urban could easily have read the bearing wrong.”

“Willie, you had the deck all day. Did you ever see Captain Queeg on the side of the bridge that was exposed to the beach?”

The question startled Willie, and in a shocking flash he realized that he never had. The shuttlings and disappearances of the commanding officer during the day had puzzled him extremely, especially since it had been Queeg’s custom in previous maneuvers to stay fixed in the wheelhouse, where he could hear the TBS and watch the helmsman. But the novelist’s suggestion was monstrous. Willie stared at Keefer and could not speak.

“Well, what’s the matter, Willie? Did you or didn’t you?” Maryk said angrily, “Tom, that’s the goddamnedest remark I’ve ever heard.”

“Let Willie answer, Steve.”

“Tom, I-I was pretty busy trying to keep myself straightened out. I wasn’t worrying about the captain. I don’t know-”

“You do and you’re lying, like an honorable little Princeton boy,” said the novelist. “Okay. Take a bow for trying to protect the honor of the
Caine
and the Navy.” He got up and carried his cup and saucer to the Silex. “That’s all very well, but we’re responsible for the safety of this ship, not to mention our own necks, and it’s not wise to be anything but realistic.” He poured fresh coffee, light brown and steaming, into his cup. “There is a new fact that all of us have got to live with, and let’s face it, lads. Queeg is a poltroon.”

The door opened, and Queeg came in. He was freshly shaved, still were his helmet, and carried his life jacket under his arm. “I’ll have a cup of the same, Tom, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly, Captain.”

Queeg sat in the chair at the head of the table, dropped his life jacket on the deck, and began rubbing the steel balls in his left hand. He crossed his legs and danced the upper one, so that his whole slumping body bobbed rhythmically. He stared straight ahead, with a peevish, pouting look. There were heavy green shadows under his eyes, and deep lines around his mouth. Keefer put three spoons of sugar in a cup of coffee and set it before the captain.

“Thanks. Hm. Fresh, for once.” These were the last words spoken in the wardroom for ten minutes. Queeg glanced swiftly at the officers from time to time and returned his eyes to his coffee cup. At last, draining the last mouthful, he cleared his throat and said, “Well, Willie, as long as you don’t seem to be doing much of anything, how about letting me see some decodes, here? There are about twenty-seven numbers I’m still waiting for.”

“I’ll get on it right away, sir.” The ensign opened the safe and languidly brought out the code devices.

“Tom,” said the captain, staring into his empty cup, “my records show that Ducely’s twelfth officers’ qualification assignment is due today. Where is it?”

“Sir, we’ve been at battle stations since three o’clock this morning-”

“We’re not at GQ now and haven’t been for two hours.”

“Ducely’s entitled to eat, and clean himself, and rest, sir-”

“Rest is something you do when your duties are fulfilled. I want that assignment on my desk tonight before Ducely turns in, and you’re not to turn in, either, until you receive it from him and correct it. Is that clear?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And watch those smart-alecky tones a little bit, Mr. Keefer,” the captain added, rising, his eyes on the wall. “Fitness reports include such things as willingness and subordination.” He went out of the wardroom.

“Think he heard?” Willie whispered.

“No, don’t worry,” Keefer said in a normal tone. “That was sullen face number two. Ordinary fatigue plus maybe an ulcer twinge or two.”

“You better watch your goddamn tongue,” Maryk said.

The novelist laughed. “You can’t say he isn’t on the ball. Invasion or no invasion, Ducely does his assignment. You never saw a more fearless wielder of a check list than Old Yellowstain-”

Maryk rose and walked to the door, setting a frayed overseas cap on his head. “All right,” he said, in a dry voice. “Mr. Keefer, the name of the commanding officer of this ship is Captain Queeg. I’m his executive officer. I don’t want any more of this name-calling in my presence, do you hear? None of this Old Yellowstain or anything but plain Captain Queeg.”

“Turn me in,
Mister
Maryk,” said Keefer, opening his eyes wide so that the whites glittered. “Tell Queeg what I think of him. Let him court-martial me for insubordination.”

Maryk uttered a brief obscenity and went out.

“Well, I guess I’ll hunt up poor Ducely,” Keefer said, “and screw that assignment out of him.”

Harding said, “My audit of the ship’s service accounts is due.” He tossed aside a magazine and yawned. “Guess I’d better do it before I turn in. Last month he sent for me at one o’clock in the morning and asked for it.”

“Brilliant administrator, our captain,” Keefer said as he went out.

Harding and Keith looked at each other with identical expressions of wry, worried amusement. Harding scratched his head. “Willie,” he said softly, “did the captain keep dodging to the covered side of the bridge?” His tone appealed to the brotherhood of three months in the clip shack, of two green ensigns sick together at the top of a mast.